Home › Poems › Drinking Wine, No. 5
Yǐn JiǔDrinking Wine, No. 5 饮酒
Tao Yuanming picks chrysanthemums by the east fence and sees the southern hills.
Original Chinese text with pinyin
采菊东篱下
cǎi jú dōng lí xià
悠然见南山
yōu rán jiàn nán shān
山气日夕佳
shān qì rì xī jiā
飞鸟相与还
fēi niǎo xiāng yǔ hái
Simplified characters; traditional title: 飲酒. This is a long poem; only the best-known lines are shown, and “……” marks omitted passages.
Note on the text: This page presents a well-known excerpt; the full poem is longer in the traditional corpus.
English translation
Picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence,
I catch sight, at ease, of the southern hills.
The mountain air is lovely at sunset;
the birds fly home together.
Original translation by Poetune — literal but poetic, written for this site.
Line by line
Meaning and imagery
Picking chrysanthemums by the east hedge, I catch sight of South Mountain. Mountain light at dusk, birds returning together—truth is here, and words forget themselves.
Background
Tao Yuanming picks chrysanthemums by the east fence and sees the southern hills.
Key words
- 东篱 dōng lí
- the eastern hedge — Tao Yuanming's chrysanthemum fence
- 南山 nán shān
- the southern mountains — often Zhongnan
- 真意 zhēn yì
- true meaning; the real intent
About the poet: Tao Yuanming
Tao Yuanming resigned office to farm; his garden poems made him the ancestor of pastoral verse.
Lifetime: 365?–427. Other famous works: Drinking Wine, No. 5 (饮酒); Miscellaneous Poem (杂诗).