Hearing a Flute in Luoyang on a Spring Night
春夜洛城聞笛
Chūn yè Luò chéng wén dí
Li Bai’s spring-night flute in Luoyang, with pinyin and English notes explaining the unseen player, the Breaking the Willow tune, and feelings of home.
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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
- 誰家 shuí jiā whose house
- 玉笛 yù dí jade-like fine flute
- 暗 àn unseen
- 飛聲 fēi shēng send sound flying
Word meanings — Line 2
- 散入 sàn rù scatter into
- 春風 chūn fēng spring wind
- 滿 mǎn fill
- 洛城 luò chéng Luoyang
Word meanings — Line 3
- 此夜 cǐ yè tonight
- 曲中 qǔ zhōng in the tune
- 聞 wén hear
- 折柳 zhé liǔ Breaking the Willow
Word meanings — Line 4
- 何人 hé rén who
- 不起 bù qǐ not arise
- 故園 gù yuán old home
- 情 qíng feeling
English translation by PoemWell.
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Original
誰家玉笛暗飛聲，
散入春風滿洛城。
此夜曲中聞折柳，
何人不起故園情。
Translation
From whose house does a fine flute send its sound unseen?
It scatters into the spring wind and fills Luoyang.
Tonight, in the tune, I hear Breaking the Willow;
whose feelings for the old home would not rise?
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.
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Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
誰家玉笛暗飛聲，
Pronunciation hint
shuí jiā
Reveal meaning and translation
誰家 — whose house
From whose house does a fine flute send its sound unseen?
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Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
此夜曲中聞折柳，
Pronunciation hint
cǐ yè
Reveal meaning and translation
此夜 — tonight
Tonight, in the tune, I hear Breaking the Willow;
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Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
何人不起故園情。
Pronunciation hint
hé rén
Reveal meaning and translation
何人 — who
whose feelings for the old home would not rise?
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
Sound without a visible player
誰家 asks whose house the sound comes from. The poem never answers. 暗 leaves its source unseen, while 飛 and 散 make sound move through the spring air. 玉笛 presents a fine flute; it need not serve as a material specification proving that the instrument was entirely jade.
滿洛城 enlarges the audible scene to Luoyang. This is the speaker’s experience of pervading music, not a report that measures how far the performance could physically be heard.
Recognizing a tune and its associations
折柳 names a farewell melody associated with breaking willow branches. 曲中, “within the tune,” makes the musical setting explicit. The heard thing is not wood snapping, nor does the verse give us enough information to reconstruct the original melody.
The final question reverses the opening one. At first the source is unknown; by the end the emotional association feels widely recognizable. 故園 is the old home, and 起 describes a feeling being stirred. “Who would not” invites agreement rather than claiming to have surveyed every listener.
Compare the actual willows and parting cup in Sending Yuan Er to Anxi. One poem places a farewell before us; the other lets an unseen performance recall the world of parting.
Compare 飛 in the opening with 起 in the final question. The sound flies outward and then a feeling rises in the people it reaches. The English keeps “rise” for 起 so the music's movement has an answer inside the listener.
Form and tone
The rhyme at 聲, 城, and 情 carries the passage from sound to city to feeling. Two questions frame the seven-character quatrain: the source of the music is unknown, but the response is presented as almost unavoidable.
See the quatrain guide for the form. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; no unverified historical tone grid is supplied.
Historical context
洛城 is Luoyang. This is a night of listening in a city, unlike the quiet room of Quiet Night Thought. The poem lets a public sound awaken an inward relation to another place.
Continue with Li Bai or the homesickness shelf.
Read this poem alongside the contrasting selections in our homesickness reading guide.
Sources
Chinese text compared with 春夜洛城聞笛, public transcription on Wikisource. Punctuation is editorial; the English translation and reading notes are original to PoemWell. The tune association is also identified in the old commentary to Li Taibai quanji, juan 25.
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
Li Bai. “Hearing a Flute in Luoyang on a Spring Night” (春夜洛城聞笛). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/spring-night-flute-in-luoyang
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.