Listen to this article月夜
今夜鄜州月[1]，
闺中[2]只独看。
遥怜小儿女，
未解忆长安。
香雾云鬟[3]湿，
清辉玉臂寒。
何时倚虚幌[4]，
双照泪痕干。
注释：
[1] 鄜（fū）州：今陕西省富县。
[2] 闺中：此指妻子。
[3] 云鬟：形容女子头发蓬松的样子。
[4] 虚幌：轻薄透明的帷帐。
A Moonlit Night
Du Fu
On the moon over Fuzhou which shines bright,
Alone you would gaze in your room tonight.
I’m grieved to think our little children dear
Too young to yearn for their old father here.
Your cloudlike hair is moist with dew, it seems;
Your jade-white arms would feel the cold moonbeams.
O when can we stand by the window side,
Watching the moon with our tear traces dried?
As a refugee, the poet writes this poem to his wife far away in Qiang Village at Fuzhou.
《月夜》是唐代大诗人杜甫创作的一首五言律诗，是作者被禁于长安时望月思家之作。此诗借助想象，抒写妻子对自己的思念，也写出自己对妻子的思念。首联想象妻子在鄜州望月思念自己，说透诗人在长安的思亲心情；颔联说儿女随母望月而不理解其母的思念亲人之情，表现诗人想念儿女、体贴妻子之情；颈联写想象中的妻子望月长思，充满悲伤的情绪；尾联寄托希望，以将来相聚共同望月，反衬今日相思之苦。全诗构思新奇，章法紧密，明白如话，情真意切，深婉动人。
“A Moonlit Night” is a poem in five lines written by Du Fu, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, when the author was banned from Chang’an and thought of his family. This poem uses imagination to express his wife’s thoughts about himself and his own thoughts about his wife. The first couplet imagines his wife looking at the moon in Shaanxi Province and thinking of himself, which expresses the poet’s feeling of missing his family in Chang’an; the third couplet says that his children look at the moon with their mother but do not understand their mother’s feeling of missing their relatives, which shows the poet’s feeling of missing his children and being considerate of his wife; the neck couplet writes about his imaginary wife looking at the moon and thinking of her, which is full of sadness; the last couplet expresses the hope that we will meet in the future and look at the moon together, which contrasts with the suffering of longing for each other today. The whole poem is novel in conception, close in chapter, clear as words, sincere in feeling and touching in feeling.
