Poetry
Thoughts of a Quiet Night
靜夜思
Li Bai · 750
Opening lines
牀前明月光，
疑是地上霜。
舉頭望明月，
低頭思故鄉。
Before my bed, the bright moonlight;
I take it for frost upon the ground.
Raising my head, I gaze at the bright moon;
Lowering my head, I think of my homeland.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wikisource.org
Synopsis
A quatrain of twenty characters, in four lines of five. At the foot of his bed, the poet sees a brightness that he first takes for frost on the ground; he raises his head and looks at the moon, then lowers it and thinks of his native land. The poem names neither place nor person. It has been read in the light of filial piety and linked to the Mid-Autumn Festival, a time of family reunion.
Context
The poem appears in the Three Hundred Tang Poems, as number 233 according to East Asia Student. Three of its four lines rhyme, the third excepted, in Middle Chinese as in most present-day varieties. Its text has varied: under the Northern Song, Guo Maoqian's Yuefu collection reads “gazing at the brightness” and “the moon over the mountain”, where the common version says “bright moon” twice; the addition of this last word was frequent under the Ming. J. P. Seaton translated it into English in a selection of Li Bai's poems published in Boston in 2012.
Who it is for
Four short lines; several English translations are in circulation, under titles that vary from one translator to another.
Prizes and reception
It is ranked among the most famous texts of its author, and among the first that Chinese schoolchildren learn.
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