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Tí Lǐ Níng Yōu JūLi Ning's Secluded Dwelling 题李凝幽居
Jia Dao's "a monk knocks at the gate under the moon", the origin of the word for revising.
Original Chinese text with pinyin
鸟宿池边树
niǎo sù chí biān shù
僧敲月下门
sēng qiāo yuè xià mén
Simplified characters; traditional title: 題李凝幽居. 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
Birds roost in the trees by the pond;
a monk knocks at a gate beneath the moon.
Original translation by Poetune — literal but poetic, written for this site.
Line by line
Meaning and imagery
Jia Dao's "a monk knocks at the gate under the moon", the origin of the word for revising. The scene stays with you.
Background
Jia Dao's "a monk knocks at the gate under the moon", the origin of the word for revising.
Key words
- 闲居 xián jū
- living at leisure; quiet retirement
- 敲 qiāo
- to knock (as in monk knocking at the gate)
- 李凝 lǐ níng
- Li Ning — the recluse whose quiet house Jia Dao visits
About the poet: Jia Dao
Jia Dao, once a Buddhist monk, was famous for agonizing over single words; the Chinese term for careful revision, "tuiqiao" (push or knock), comes from a story about him. His poems are austere and quiet.
Lifetime: 779–843. Other famous works: Seeking the Recluse but Not Finding Him (寻隐者不遇); Li Ning's Secluded Dwelling (题李凝幽居).