Sending Off a Monk

Lines 1–2 — A portrait by resemblance

將 connects the solitary cloud and wild crane. Each can go on without attachment to one dwelling. 豈 makes the question rhetorical, so the English asks “how could you stay?” 人間 is the human world in the question, with the monk’s freedom understood through the first line’s images.

Lines 3–4 — How secluded is a famous mountain?

莫 turns the praise into advice. 買 does mean “buy.” The English supplies “a retreat” to show what could be acquired on Mount Wozhou. The answer comes in the practical 已知處, that people already know the location. The earlier question placed the monk far from ordinary human affairs. The last line imagines what will happen when ordinary people know precisely where to find him.

This five-character quatrain moves from airy comparison to a concrete prohibition. The final matter-of-fact line gently punctures the grandeur of the cloud and crane. The shift makes the farewell conversational rather than merely an elevated portrait.

See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.

Mount Wozhou was associated with religious retreat in literary memory. The poem assumes that reputation while warning that reputation itself attracts attention. It does not document a real property transaction or establish the precise destination of the monk being addressed.

Continue with Liu Changqing and the farewell reading path. Compare Seeing Off the Monk Lingche and Seeking a Hermit, Without Finding Him using the reading connections below.