Spring View from a Country Home

Lines 1–2: a view that answers the opening question

出門 is the simple act that puts the speaker outside. 何所見 asks what there is to see. 滿 gives the answer abundance, and 平蕪 locates it on level grassy ground. The English keeps the question and answer separate, allowing the fullness of the spring view to arrive all at once.

Lines 3–4: what the full view cannot supply

無知己 describes the absence of someone who recognizes the speaker’s worth. Set 滿 beside 無: the land is full while companionship of this kind is missing. 高陽酒徒 evokes the early Han figure Li Yiji, known through the persona of a Gaoyang drinker. 一 makes the self-description solitary. The adopted title gives the lament the tone of someone making light of his own place.

Each line of this quatrain has five characters. The opening question-and-answer pair is countered by a lament and a literary self-description. The last line contains an allusion, not an additional landscape detail. Modern pinyin is provided without an unverified historical tone grid.

Gao Shi can write an encouraging farewell to someone he considers widely known, then give this rural speaker no understanding friend at all. The contrast is useful: scenery alone does not settle a poem's mood. Here nature supplies abundance while human recognition remains absent.