唐 Tang · 诗 Poem
登池州九峰楼寄张祜
Climbing the Nine-Peak Tower at Chizhou, Sent to Zhang Hu
百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼。
碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休。
睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求。
谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。
A horn note rises alone from the tower in the sunset.
Before the blue hills all day long, my thoughts have no end,
The fragrant grasses - in what year will this resentment cease?
Eyelashes are right before the eyes, yet always unseen;
The Way is not outside the self, so what more is there to seek?
Who can compare with young Lord Zhang,
Whose thousand poems make light of a lord of ten thousand households?
Meaning
Standing on a tower at Chizhou in the evening, Du Mu is overwhelmed by feeling he cannot govern, and a single horn note from the tower seems to speak for it. Looking at the hills and grasses, he finds his grievances endless. He then turns to two truths - that people overlook what is under their noses, and that the Way is not to be sought outside oneself - and arrives at his friend Zhang Hu, a poet of real genius whom the official world never properly recognised. The poem ends by declaring that a thousand poems outweigh the highest rank.
百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼。碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休。睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求。谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。
Appreciation
[Plain Paraphrase] Feeling rises in him from every direction and cannot be governed; a horn sounds alone from the sunset tower. All day the blue hills and the fragrant grass seem to draw out thoughts and resentment that will not end. Then come two maxims: a man cannot see his own eyelashes, and the Way is not something external to seek. From these he reaches his friend - who can match Lord Zhang, whose thousand poems make a nobleman's title seem light? [Structure] the first couplet states the mood, the second extends it into landscape, the third turns abruptly to argument, and the last lands on praise of a particular person. [Imagery] the images are few and large - a tower, a horn, hills, grass - and they exist mainly to give the argument somewhere to happen. [Feeling] the poem is an act of championship. The proverb about the eyelashes is really about Zhang Hu: talent that was too close to be seen by the people who should have recognised it.
【白话串讲】 杜牧写《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》：“百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼”——“碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休”——“睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求”——“谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯”——他寄张祜——千首诗轻万户侯。 【意象与手法】 “百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼”写百感与角声；“碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休”以碧山芳草写思念；“睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求”写道非身外；结以“谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯”以千首诗轻万户侯写张祜。深沉豪迈。 【情感与主旨】 杜牧登九峰楼寄张祜之作，写百感中来、碧山芳草的思念与对张祜“千首诗轻万户侯”的推许，是杜牧酬赠诗中的名篇。 【名句点睛】 常考“碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休”以碧山芳草写思念；“谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯”以千首诗写张祜。
Background
Du Mu (803-c. 852), courtesy name Muzhi, was a native of Wannian near Chang'an and, with Li Shangyin, one of the two great late Tang poets. He came from an eminent official family, passed the jinshi examination young, and spent most of his career in provincial posts, including several years as prefect of Chizhou on the Yangtze, where this poem was written. Zhang Hu, the friend he addresses, was a gifted poet of the same generation who never succeeded in official life: despite the support of the powerful minister Linghu Chu, his candidacy was blocked, traditionally through the hostility of Yuan Zhen, and he spent his life as a wandering poet before settling in the south. Du Mu admired him extravagantly and wrote several poems in his defence. The tower named in the title stood outside the walls of Chizhou, and climbing it at dusk would have given a view of the river and of the hills to the south - the scenery of the second couplet. Horn calls from a city wall at sunset were part of the daily routine of a Tang prefectural town.
《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》为唐代诗人杜牧所作诗。杜牧（803—约852），字牧之，京兆万年（今陕西西安）人，唐代诗人，「小李杜」之一。此诗写感怀赠答，为登池州九峰楼寄张祜之作。诗中「百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼」写百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼；「碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休」写碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休；「睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求」写睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求；「谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯」写谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。杜牧此诗以感怀赠答、千首诗轻万户侯写其赠答之情，深沉豪迈，是杜牧诗中的名篇。此篇《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》在历代选本中多被收录，其艺术价值与流传之广，正可见此诗在同类题材中的重要地位。诗人以匠心独运之笔写寻常之情事，遂使此作历千载而犹有生气，为后人所称赏不绝。此篇《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》在历代选本中多被收录，其艺术价值与流传之广，正可见此诗在同类题材中的重要地位。诗人以匠心独运之笔写寻常之情事，遂使此作历千载而犹有生气，为后人所称赏不绝。
Art
The most striking feature of the poem is its third couplet, which breaks the emotional continuity with two gnomic statements. After two couplets of hills, grass and unending resentment, the reader expects more landscape or an explicit complaint; instead he gets a proverb about eyelashes and a metaphysical declaration about the Way. That abruptness is deliberate: it converts mood into argument at exactly the point where the mood has become intolerable, and it prepares the closing couplet, which needs a principle rather than a feeling in order to make its claim. The first couplet is equally calculated: a hundred feelings is an exaggeration that establishes the speaker as a man at the mercy of his own responses, and the solitary horn note rising is the acoustic equivalent of that solitude. The last couplet is then built as a scale - a thousand poems weighed against ten thousand households - and the verb make light of performs the weighing in a single word. Throughout, Du Mu keeps the diction plain and the syntax firm, so that a poem of strong opinion reads as a poem of judgement rather than of rhetoric.
此诗艺术上以「深沉豪迈、以景写情」见长。全诗共八句，由百感中来不自由而碧山终日思无尽而睫在眼前长不见。起「百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼」写百感中来不自由：百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼；「碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休」写碧山终日思无尽：碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休；「睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求」写睫在眼前长不见：睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求；结「谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯」写谁人得似张公子：谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。全诗以景写情，由百感中来不自由而千首诗轻万户侯，深沉豪迈，是杜牧诗中的名篇。通篇以少总多之法出之，章法严谨而用意深曲，意象凝练而情韵悠长，读之愈久，愈觉其构思之精与笔力之健，堪称同类诗作中不可多得之佳篇，足见诗人炉火纯青的艺术功力。通篇以少总多之法出之，章法严谨而用意深曲，意象凝练而情韵悠长，读之愈久，愈觉其构思之精与笔力之健，堪称同类诗作中不可多得之佳篇，足见诗人炉火纯青的艺术功力。
Allusions
The couplet of maxims carries the intellectual weight. Eyelashes are right before the eyes and yet never seen is a proverb with a long history, used to illustrate how people fail to notice what is nearest to them; Du Mu applies it to the way official opinion overlooked Zhang Hu while pursuing reputation elsewhere. The declaration that the Way is not outside the self draws on the Confucian and Neo-Confucian insistence that moral truth is internal rather than something to be acquired from rank or patronage - a pointed thing to say to a friend denied office. The closing image of the lord of ten thousand households is the highest hereditary title of the Han system, and by setting a thousand poems against it Du Mu inverts the normal scale of value in a single line. The hills and fragrant grasses of the second couplet belong to the older tradition in which such scenery figures the persistence of sorrow, the grass especially recalling the Chu ci convention that fragrant plants stand for worth that is neglected.
诗中「百感中来不自由角声孤起夕阳楼」「碧山终日思无尽芳草何年恨即休」「睫在眼前长不见道非身外更何求」「谁人得似张公子千首诗轻万户侯」等语，皆含典故故实。「百感中来不自由角声孤起夕阳楼」写百感中来不自由角声孤起夕阳楼；「碧山终日思无尽芳草何年恨即休」写碧山终日思无尽芳草何年恨即休；「睫在眼前长不见道非身外更何求」写睫在眼前长不见道非身外更何求；「谁人得似张公子千首诗轻万户侯」用万户侯之典（万户侯写封侯之贵），写谁人得似张公子千首诗轻万户侯。诗人以万户侯等典入诗，不着痕迹，而把感怀赠答之情写得真切可感，是善于熔铸典故的体现。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。
Commentary
This poem has always been read primarily as a document of literary friendship, and criticism of it has concentrated on the closing couplet, which became one of the standard Tang statements of the value of poetry against the value of office. Later readers have praised Du Mu's willingness to name his friend directly and to make an epigram out of a contemporary's misfortune, noting that few Tang poets praise a living writer so unreservedly. The third couplet has provoked more disagreement: some critics find the two statements abrupt and only loosely connected to the rest, while others regard them as the hinge without which the praise at the end would be mere flattery, since the point is that worth lies within a man and that the world habitually fails to see it. Song and later readers also valued the poem as evidence about Zhang Hu's reputation, since the modern view of him as a considerable poet rests substantially on Du Mu's testimony. In accounts of late Tang poetry it is frequently cited as an example of how the period's writers turned the old conventions of friendship and landscape to the service of literary polemic.
这首《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》，是杜牧写感怀赠答之作，写百感中来不自由、碧山终日思无尽、睫在眼前长不见、谁人得似张公子之情，深沉豪迈。起「百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼」——百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼。写百感中来不自由：百感中来不自由、角声孤起夕阳楼——不自由、夕阳楼；「碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休」——碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休。写碧山终日思无尽：碧山终日思无尽、芳草何年恨即休——思无尽、恨即休；「睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求」——睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求。写睫在眼前长不见：睫在眼前长不见、道非身外更何求——长不见、更何求；结「谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯」——谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯（用万户侯之典）。写谁人得似张公子：谁人得似张公子、千首诗轻万户侯——似张公子、轻万户侯。这「谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯」，是全诗之结：以千首诗轻万户侯写其赠答。全诗深沉豪迈，以景写情，正是杜牧诗中的名篇。
Prosody
Line by line
百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼。
A hundred feelings gather in me and will not be controlled; a horn note rises alone from the tower in the sunset.
百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼。
A hundred feelings surge up, beyond my control; a lone bugle rises from the sunset tower.
首句写百感中来不自由，起笔即见其感。「百感中来不自由」写百感中来不自由，「百感中来」写百感中来、「不自由」写不自由；「角声孤起夕阳楼」写角声孤起夕阳楼，「角声孤起」写角声孤起、「夕阳楼」写夕阳楼。两句一写百感中来不自由、一写角声孤起夕阳楼，以百感中来不自由写不自由、以角声孤起夕阳楼写夕阳楼，写尽百感中来不自由、角声孤起夕阳楼之情。以感起兴，深沉而豪迈，是「以感起兴」的妙笔。
The opening line writes a hundred feelings surge up, beyond my control, the feelings at once. The words a hundred feelings surge up write the rising; beyond my control the helplessness. A lone bugle rises from the sunset tower writes the bugle. The two lines, one writing the surging feelings beyond control, one writing the lone bugle from the sunset tower, write to the full the feeling of the surging heart and the bugle. Rising through the feeling, deep and heroic, the fine brush of rising through the feeling.
碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休。
Before the blue hills all day long, my thoughts have no end; the fragrant grasses - in what year will this resentment cease?
碧山终日思无尽，芳草何年恨即休。
The green hills all day long, my thought unending; the fragrant grass, in what year will the grief cease?
此二句写碧山终日思无尽，是全诗写碧山之态的关键。「碧山终日思无尽」写碧山终日思无尽，「碧山终日」写碧山终日、「思无尽」写思无尽；「芳草何年恨即休」写芳草何年恨即休，「芳草何年」写芳草何年、「恨即休」写恨即休。两句一写碧山终日思无尽、一写芳草何年恨即休，以碧山终日思无尽写思无尽、以芳草何年恨即休写恨即休，写尽碧山终日思无尽、芳草何年恨即休之情。以山写情，深沉而豪迈，是「以山写情」的点睛之笔。
The two lines write the green hills all day long, my thought unending, the key of the whole's writing the green hills. The words the green hills all day long write the hills; my thought unending the longing. The fragrant grass, in what year will the grief cease? writes the question. The two lines, one writing the unending thought before the green hills, one writing the grief's ceasing on the fragrant grass, write to the full the feeling of the endless thought and the unceasing grief. Writing feeling through the hill, deep and heroic, the eye-dotting brush.
睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求。
Eyelashes are right before the eyes, yet always unseen; the Way is not outside the self, so what more is there to seek?
睫在眼前长不见，道非身外更何求。
The eyelash is before the eye, yet always unseen; the Way is not without the self - what more to seek?
此二句写睫在眼前长不见，是全诗写睫前之态的关键。「睫在眼前长不见」写睫在眼前长不见，「睫在眼前」写睫在眼前、「长不见」写长不见；「道非身外更何求」写道非身外更何求，「道非身外」写道非身外、「更何求」写更何求。两句一写睫在眼前长不见、一写道非身外更何求，以睫在眼前长不见写长不见、以道非身外更何求写更何求，写尽睫在眼前长不见、道非身外更何求之情。以道写情，深沉而豪迈，是「以道写情」的点睛之笔。
The two lines write the eyelash is before the eye, yet always unseen, the key of the whole's writing the eyelash before the eye. The words the eyelash is before the eye write what is near; yet always unseen the oversight. The Way is not without the self - what more to seek? writes the truth within. The two lines, one writing the near yet unseen, one writing the Way not without the self, write to the full the feeling of the unseen eyelash and the inner Way. Writing feeling through the Way, deep and heroic, the eye-dotting brush.
谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。
Who can compare with young Lord Zhang, whose thousand poems make light of a lord of ten thousand households?
谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯。
Who can be like Master Zhang, who for a thousand poems makes light of the ten-thousand-household marquis?
结句写谁人得似张公子，是全诗立意的落点。「谁人得似张公子」写谁人得似张公子，「谁人得似」写谁人得似、「张公子」写张公子；「千首诗轻万户侯」用万户侯之典写千首诗轻万户侯，「千首诗轻」写千首诗轻、「万户侯」写万户侯。两句一写谁人得似张公子、一写千首诗轻万户侯，以谁人得似张公子写似张公子、以千首诗轻万户侯写轻万户侯，写尽谁人得似张公子、千首诗轻万户侯之情。以诗写情，深沉而豪迈，是全诗最动人处，也是「以诗写情」的点睛之笔。
The closing line writes who can be like Master Zhang, the landing of the whole's bent. The words who can be like write the praise; Master Zhang the addressee. For a thousand poems makes light of the ten-thousand-household marquis uses the ten-thousand-household marquis allusion. The two lines, one writing who can be like Master Zhang, one writing the thousand poems making light of the marquis, write to the full the feeling of the like and the lightness. Writing feeling through the poem, deep and heroic, the most moving place of the whole and the eye-dotting brush.
Study
Word focus
Related Reading
Liu Yong's speaker is undone by the view and remains undone, his poem ending in unrelieved longing. Du Mu also begins overwhelmed but refuses to stay there: he turns the mood into two principles and then into a defence of another man. The contrast is between a lyric that inhabits helplessness and a regulated poem that argues its way out of it.
柳永《八声甘州·对潇潇暮雨洒江天》「对潇潇暮雨洒江天，一番洗清秋」，写登高感怀、深沉凝望，是宋词写羁旅的名篇；杜牧《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》则以「百感中来不自由，角声孤起夕阳楼」「碧山终日思无尽」写不自由夕阳楼、碧山思无尽。两诗同写登高感怀、深沉凝望：一写对潇潇暮雨洒江天、以暮雨写清秋，一写百感中来不自由角声孤起夕阳楼、以登楼写感怀；一为柳永之清丽、一为杜牧之深沉，并读正可见诗写「登高感怀」的两种笔法，皆于登高之中见感怀。
水调歌头·明月几时有 Song of the Water Melody: When Did the Bright Moon First Appear 苏轼 · 同写感怀旷达、超然物外，一写我欲乘风归去、一写谁人得似张公子千首诗轻万户侯，皆于感怀之中见旷达 Both reach a position of independence from worldly rank through an act of imaginative ascent.Su Shi imagines riding the wind home and then decides against it, settling for a human consolation; his transcendence is speculative and solitary. Du Mu's is social and actual: he descends from the tower's mood to praise a friend and to declare poetry weightier than titles. One poet resolves the question in the sky, the other on the ground, among the people he admires.
苏轼《水调歌头·明月几时有》「我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒」，写感怀旷达、超然物外，是宋词长调的名篇；杜牧《登池州九峰楼寄张祜》则以「谁人得似张公子，千首诗轻万户侯」「道非身外更何求」写似张公子、轻万户侯。两诗同写感怀旷达、超然物外：一写我欲乘风归去、以乘风写超然，一写谁人得似张公子千首诗轻万户侯、以诗才写旷达；一为苏轼之超然、一为杜牧之豪迈，并读正可见诗写「感怀旷达」的两种笔法，皆于感怀之中见旷达。