An Old Fisherman
漁翁
Yú wēng
An unseen fisherman becomes audible among hills and water. Follow all six lines as smoke, song, sunlight, and a drifting boat reshape the scene.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
About the text and pronunciation
The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 漁 yú fishing
- 翁 wēng old man
- 夜 yè night
- 傍 bàng beside
- 西 xī west
- 巖 yán cliff
- 宿 sù lodges
Word meanings — Line 2
- 曉 xiǎo dawn
- 汲 jí draw water
- 清 qīng clear
- 湘 xiāng Xiang
- 燃 rán burn
- 楚 chǔ Chu
- 竹 zhú bamboo
Word meanings — Line 3
- 煙 yān smoke
- 銷 xiāo dissolves
- 日 rì sun
- 出 chū comes out
- 不 bú not
- 見 jiàn see
- 人 rén person
Word meanings — Line 4
- 欸 ǎi rowing cry
- 乃 nǎi rowing cry
- 一 yì one
- 聲 shēng sound
- 山 shān mountains
- 水 shuǐ water
- 綠 lǜ green
Word meanings — Line 5
- 迴 huí turn
- 看 kàn look
- 天 tiān sky
- 際 jì edge
- 下 xià go down
- 中 zhōng middle
- 流 liú current
Word meanings — Line 6
- 巖 yán cliff
- 上 shàng above
- 無 wú without
- 心 xīn intention
- 雲 yún clouds
- 相 xiāng one another
- 逐 zhú follow
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
漁翁夜傍西巖宿，
曉汲清湘燃楚竹。
煙銷日出不見人，
欸乃一聲山水綠。
迴看天際下中流，
巖上無心雲相逐。
Translation
At night the fisherman sleeps beside the western cliff;
at dawn he draws clear Xiang water and burns Chu bamboo.
Smoke thins; the sun rises; no person is in sight.
One rowing cry—and mountain and water turn green.
Looking back toward the sky's edge, he descends midstream;
above the cliffs, unthinking clouds follow one another.
Try it from memory
After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
漁翁夜傍西巖宿，
Pronunciation hint
bàng
Reveal meaning and translation
傍 — beside
At night the fisherman sleeps beside the western cliff;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
欸乃一聲山水綠。
Pronunciation hint
shēng
Reveal meaning and translation
聲 — sound
One rowing cry—and mountain and water turn green.
-
Line 6 · What does the marked word mean?
巖上無心雲相逐。
Pronunciation hint
xīn
Reveal meaning and translation
心 — intention
above the cliffs, unthinking clouds follow one another.
One more question: what changes?
Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.
Line-by-line notes →Self-check at your own pace. No score or progress is saved. Open only the answers you want included when printing.
Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 · The fisherman’s morning
夜 and 曉 put a night’s lodging beside a morning’s work. 汲 is drawing water, and 燃 is lighting or burning fuel. The paired names 湘 and 楚 give those tasks a southern setting. The poem starts close enough to distinguish what the fisherman draws and what he burns.
Lines 3–4 · A sound where the figure was
煙銷 and 日出 clear the view, yet 不見人 leaves the fisherman unseen. 欸乃 is a rowing sound or a boatman’s cry. The pinyin gives the conventional modern ǎi nǎi, and the English chooses “rowing cry.” Read 一聲 with the abrupt 山水綠 that follows. The verse places sound and color side by side without a word for “because.” The dash in English keeps the suddenness of that connection.
Lines 5–6 · Following the motion
迴看 leaves its subject unstated. The translation follows the fisherman, now moving down the middle of the river, and gives him the backward glance. The last line moves the eye up to the cliffs. 無心 describes clouds moving without intention. 相逐 gives them a visible relation to each other as they drift in succession. These final lines continue the journey after the burst of green.
Form and tone
All six seven-character lines are included. This is an old-style poem, not an eight-line lüshi with two lines missing. The sequence passes from night to dawn, sight to sound, and close daily work to a moving distant view. The last pair keeps the scene traveling beyond the striking green image.
See old-style verse for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.
Historical context
The Xiang River and Chu bamboo place the poem in the southern landscape of Liu Zongyuan’s writing. Later criticism sometimes favors the first four lines alone; this page presents the received six-line work. Its fisherman should be compared with River Snow before the two are treated as the same portrait.
Continue with Liu Zongyuan and the nature reading path. Compare River Snow and The West Stream at Chuzhou using the reading connections below.
Sources
漁翁 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The displayed traditional text follows this reading. Punctuation and line breaks are editorial. Translation, glosses, and reading notes are original to PoemWell.
English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Updated .
Cite this reading
Liu Zongyuan. “An Old Fisherman” (漁翁). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/old-fisherman
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.