Sitting Alone on Jingting Mountain

Lines 1–2: leaving the scene

盡 finishes the birds' movement: they have flown completely out of view. 獨 belongs first to the cloud, which goes away alone. The title's solitary sitter is therefore echoed by something solitary that will not stay. 閒 gives that departure an unhurried ease. “Drifts” is our English choice for the cloud's movement; the Chinese verb is simply “go.”

The poem does not say that people have rejected the speaker. Before interpreting it as a personal grievance, notice how precisely it removes what can move.

Lines 3–4: who are the two?

相看 is mutual looking, and 兩 says there are two participants. Their identities remain suspended until the final line names the mountain. 厭 here is weariness or having had enough: the pair do not tire of looking. Our translation places the implied speaker beside the mountain to make the relationship readable in English.

只有 means “there is only.” After the departures, its restriction becomes a kind of companionship. The mountain does not speak or take human form; the grammar of looking is enough to give it a part in the encounter.

Is the mountain looking back literally?

The poem gives the mountain a role through reciprocal language, not through a reported supernatural event. 相看 requires a pair; 只有 narrows the remaining company. An English rendering that says only “I look at the mountain” loses that reciprocity, while one that gives the mountain a spoken reply invents more than the Chinese supplies. Read the opening 盡, “all gone,” against the closing 有, “there is”: what remains acquires its value because the moving things have left.

The poem uses singularity twice before 兩 makes a pair: the title has a solitary sitter, and line two has a solitary cloud. Neither solitude guarantees company. The cloud is free to drift away, while the mountain can stay in the same gaze. That difference makes the last pair possible.

This is a five-character jueju. The first pair follows things out of sight; the second holds a gaze in place. The final three characters name 敬亭山, so the poem arrives at the place already announced by its title with a changed understanding of it.

閒 and 山 occupy the even-line rhyme positions. Modern Mandarin pronunciation is supplied for reading, not as a reconstruction of the rhyme's Tang sound. We omit a historical tone grid; the movement from departures to sustained attention can be followed without one.

Li Bai makes the speaker present without writing 我, “I.” The title supplies sitting alone, and the third line supplies a pair. This compact exchange belongs to the nature shelf because looking at a landscape becomes a relation within it.

In Bamboo Grove, Wang Wei's solitary music ends with the moon arriving. Here almost everything leaves. In Drinking Alone beneath the Moon, Li Bai explicitly invites and counts his companions; Jingting Mountain requires no such ceremony.

The four lines do not give a date or an occasion. A reading does not need to decide which disappointment in Li Bai's life they must represent. The English translation and notes are original to PoemWell.

Read this poem alongside the contrasting selections in our mountain poetry guide.