Spring at the Mountain Room: Liang Garden
山房春事二首（其二）
Shānfáng chūn shì èr shǒu · qí èr
Cen Shen’s trees repeat their flowering in Liang Garden without knowing that the people are gone, in a text with a consequential variant.
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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
- 梁 liáng Liang
- 園 yuán Garden
- 日 rì day
- 暮 mù dusk
- 亂 luàn scattered
- 飛 fēi flying
- 鴉 yā crows
Word meanings — Line 2
- 極 jí utmost
- 目 mù sight
- 蕭 xiāo bleak
- 條 tiáo sparse
- 三 sān three
- 兩 liǎng two
- 家 jiā homes
Word meanings — Line 3
- 庭 tíng courtyard
- 樹 shù trees
- 不 bù not
- 知 zhī know
- 人 rén people
- 死 sǐ dead
- 盡 jìn all
Word meanings — Line 4
- 春 chūn spring
- 來 lái comes
- 還 hái still
- 發 fā open
- 舊 jiù old
- 時 shí time
- 花 huā flowers
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
梁園日暮亂飛鴉，
極目蕭條三兩家。
庭樹不知人死盡，
春來還發舊時花。
Translation
At dusk in Liang Garden, crows scatter through the air;
as far as I can see, only two or three bleak homes.
The courtyard trees do not know that the people have all died:
spring comes, and they open the flowers of former days.
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?
梁園日暮亂飛鴉，
Pronunciation hint
mù
Reveal meaning and translation
暮 — dusk
At dusk in Liang Garden, crows scatter through the air;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
庭樹不知人死盡，
Pronunciation hint
zhī
Reveal meaning and translation
知 — know
The courtyard trees do not know that the people have all died:
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
春來還發舊時花。
Pronunciation hint
fā
Reveal meaning and translation
發 — open
spring comes, and they open the flowers of former days.
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.
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Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2: the limit of the view
梁園 is Liang Garden, with a name that carries memories of earlier gathering and splendor. The poem’s own view is at dusk, with crows flying and very few households. 極目 stretches sight as far as it will go. 三兩家 answers that wide look with an idiomatic small number.
Lines 3–4: the trees keep an old calendar
The source reading 人死盡 makes the human loss death. The recorded 人去盡 would make it departure. The translation follows the former. 不知 assigns the trees an absence of knowledge about that loss. 還發 means the blossoms return in their usual season. Read 舊時 with 還: spring makes something look like former days at the very place where the old human life is gone.
Form and tone
The second seven-character jueju rhymes 鴉, 家, and 花. 不知 is the turning phrase: the scene is reread through the trees' inability to know what has changed. Modern pinyin is provided; no historical tonal grid is invented.
Historical context
Cen Shen's landscape can be hospitable to human life in the first spring poem and unaware of its ending here. Compare Grass on the Ancient Plain, where recurring growth reaches an old road and abandoned town before becoming a farewell. Neither spring scene is exhausted by the word 'renewal.'
Sources
《全唐詩》, juan 201, Cen Shen; checked against the Wikisource transcription and its recorded variants. Punctuation is editorial.
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
Cen Shen. “Spring at the Mountain Room: Liang Garden” (山房春事二首（其二）). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/spring-at-the-mountain-room-two
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.