Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu

Lines 1–2: a waterfall seen from a distance

香爐, “incense burner,” names Censer Peak. The purple 煙 is the smoke-like appearance of sunlit mist; the verse does not describe a fire on the mountain. 遙看 establishes the distant view. 掛, “hang,” makes moving water look like something suspended and still. 前川 locates the river ahead within that view.

Lines 3–4: the view becomes a fall

飛流 supplies the speed held back by 掛. 直下 drives it directly downward. 三千尺, three thousand chi, is poetic enlargement, not a measurement from which to calculate the height of a present-day tourist waterfall. Chi is the historical unit retained in the English line.

銀河 is the Milky Way, literally the Silver River. “River of Stars” lets an English reader hear why falling water can become this celestial river. 九天 names the highest reaches of heaven. 疑是 introduces the extraordinary resemblance: the speaker seems to wonder whether the sky's river has fallen. Our question makes that wondering audible; the Chinese does not end with a question particle.

Why make moving water hang?

掛 is possible because 遙看 has placed the observer at a distance. A continuous falling stream can appear as a suspended shape before the imagination follows its downward energy. The sequence is therefore more deliberate than a list of extravagant images: sunlit haze, a hanging form, a plunge, and a celestial comparison. Compare the changing positions in Su Shi’s Mount Lu poem. Li Bai does not need to walk around the mountain to change what his view can become.

Track the vertical verbs in order. 生 has light raise haze, 掛 suspends the distant water, and 下 and 落 send it downward. The last question thus reverses the rise of the opening even as it enlarges the source of the falling water.

This seven-character jueju is the second of two poems transmitted under the waterfall title. It is a complete four-line poem, not an excerpt from its longer companion.

煙, 川, and 天 mark the rhyme-bearing first, second, and fourth endings. The third line accelerates before the final imaginative leap. Our pinyin uses modern Mandarin, including 瀑 as pù. No historical level/oblique grid is asserted here.

Li Bai combines a located view with an impossible scale. Start with the named peak, distance, and suspended stream before reaching for a general description of his imagination. The leap into heaven works because the waterfall has first been carefully seen.

Written on the Wall at West Forest Temple supplies another nature poem about Mount Lu. Su Shi changes positions and tests his knowledge; Li Bai holds a view and changes what the water could be. In Yellow Crane Tower Farewell, large space instead makes one small departure matter.

The translation and explanatory notes here are PoemWell originals. They retain the received poem's extravagant numbers without turning them into geographical facts.

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