Welcome to the sixth lesson of this series of guide on Traditional Chinese Poetry. Today, we are going to study the poem “Spring Dawn” written by 孟浩然 Meng Haoran (689-740 CE) of the Tang Dynasty.

• Text and Background

春眠不觉晓，chūn mián bù jué xiǎo ，
处处闻啼鸟。chù chù wén tí niǎo 。
夜来风雨声，yè lái fēng yǔ shēng ，
花落知多少。huā luò zhī duō shǎo 。

Meaning for each character

spring sleep not realise dawn
(everywhere) hear chirp bird
night come wind rain sound
flower fall know (how many)
() indicates two or more Chinese characters forming a single phrase, and therefore translated together

Here’s a translation of the poem by John Turner.

How suddenly the morning comes in Spring!
On every side you can hear the sweet birds sing.
Last night amidst the storm — Ah, who can tell,
With wind and rain, how many blossoms fell?

This poem offers us a look into the morning of spring as experienced by a hermit poet. Our author lived among the Lumen Mountains for most of his life and composed two hundred poems altogether.  In his forties, he tried to seek the favour of the emperor Xuanzong, but, unfortunately, when he read out one line from his collection of poems that hinted at the callousness of the emperor, it enraged him and our author was never to gain a second chance at a political career.

• Senses and Imagery

Lines 1&2 – 春眠不觉晓 chūn mián bù jué xiǎo 
                         处处闻啼鸟 chù chù wén tí niǎo

What is the first thing that comes to your mind about the season of spring? Warm sunshine? Fresh greenery? Blossoming flowers? These are all perfectly fine symbols for the coming of spring. However, this particular poem does not start with these universal images to describe the season of rebirth. Instead, the author is keen on giving the poem a more personal touch first.

The poet opens the poem with a reflection on the time he got up this morning. Usually, people in ancient China wakes up with the crowing of the rooster, when the sun is just beginning to rise in the horizon. However, our poet slept past the dawn, not noticing the cock crowing and the first beams of sunshine shone upon the earth. It is this experience of waking up late in the morning that tells us about the comforts of living in spring. The beginning season of the year is so relaxing that one cannot help but stay in bed for a bit longer, cherishing the sweet dreams of last night and the fresh hopes for the coming year.

The poem follows with a description of the birds’ chirping, which can be heard coming from everywhere. The verb “闻wén” (to hear) here shows that the poet does not directly see the birds. Maybe the windows and doors of his hut are still closed, barring a sight of the outside. Or maybe he has put the quilt over his head to cut off the bright sunshine shed onto his bed so that he could enjoy a bit more sleep. Either way, our poet is content with lying on the bed, thinking about unimportant things and hearing the chirping of a million birds in a comfortable spring morning.

Lines 3&4 – 夜来风雨声 yè lái fēng yǔ shēng
                         花落知多少 huā luò zhī duō shǎo

The second half of this poem paints a quite different picture of spring. While the first two lines talk about the bright side of the season – the warmth and comforts of its climate, the birds singing for you in the morning, among other things – the following lines focus on the fragility and transience of its beauty.

Springtime is known for having an abundance of rainfalls during the night when the still low temperatures condense the vapours from thawing rivers into rain drops. Our poet, knowing this fact, worries for all the flowers outside, many of which may have just blossomed only days or hours ago. He cannot imagine how many of them have fallen during last night’s rains, but he also cannot convince himself to open the door and see for himself. All he can do is just lie on the bed and ponder about the evanescence of spring.

These lines can be seen as following the literary trope of “惜春xī chūn”(pity spring) found in traditional Chinese poems about spring, i.e. showing the poet’s regret at its swift coming and going. They display the degree of the poet’s love for the season by depicting his unwillingness to see and accept its inevitable changes. That’s especially true for this poem, within which the poet-speaker never for once embraces the outside world with his eyes and only communicates with us, the readers, in terms of imaginations and thoughts.

• Language Tips

Traditional Chinese Version

春眠不覺曉，chūn mián bù jué xiǎo ，
處處聞啼鳥。chù chù wén tí niǎo 。
夜來風雨聲，yè lái fēng yǔ shēng ，
花落知多少。huā luò zhī duō shǎo 。

The character “觉” in the first line of this poem is a typical example of Chinese characters which have different pronunciations corresponding to different meanings. In the context of the poem, it is pronounced jué, in which case it means “to know, understand, or realise” as a verb. However, it can also be pronounced as “jiào”, and the meaning attached to this variation of sound is “to awake or (archaically) to compare” as a verb. When you take into account their possible meanings when viewed as a noun, the overall semantic meaning of the word becomes even more complicated.

In this particular poem, if we use the second pronunciation in place of the first one, the meaning of the line would change from “sleeping in spring, I didn’t notice the dawn” into something like “sleeping in spring, I cannot awake in the dawn”. The result of such displacement, in this case, is a loss in subtlety, with the latter interpretation too direct and forceful in its presentation, falling short of showing the comforts of slumbering in the warmth of spring.

As shown by the example, the meanings of words, sentences and sometimes even the whole poem can be dependent upon the choice of the pronunciation of a single character. Because of this, when we read a poem, we need to not only study its words and structures but also pay attention to its sounds.