魏晋 Wei-Jin · 诗 Poem
挽歌诗
Funeral Songs
荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧。
严霜九月中，送我出远郊。
四面无人居，高坟正嶕峣。
马为仰天鸣，风为自萧条。
幽室一已闭，千年不复朝。
千年不复朝，贤达无奈何。
向来相送人，各自还其家。
亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌。
死去何所道，托体同山阿。
In the harsh frost of the ninth month they see me out to the far suburbs.
On all four sides no man dwells; the high grave-mound stands sheer and tall.
The horse lifts its head to heaven and neighs; the wind of itself blows desolate.
Once the dark chamber has been closed, for a thousand years there will be no dawn.
For a thousand years no dawn—and even the worthy and wise can do nothing.
Those who came just now to see me off go back, each to his own home.
Kinsmen may keep some grief remaining; other men have already taken up their songs.
What is there to say of being dead? I entrust my body to become one with the hillside.
Meaning
Withered grass spreads boundless over the waste, and the white poplars give out their mournful rustling. In the deep frost of the ninth month they escort me to burial in the far suburbs. On every side there is no house or hearth, and the high grave-mound rises up alone. The horse lifts its head and cries at the sky, and the wind blows desolate of itself. Once the dark chamber is sealed, a thousand years will pass and no morning light will come again. A thousand years without daylight, and even a worthy and accomplished man can do nothing about it. The people who came to the burial a moment ago are already going home, each to his own house. Kinsmen may keep some grief in them, but strangers on the road are singing again. What is there to say about being dead? Let the body be entrusted to a corner of the green hills.
荒野里长满茫茫一片枯草，白杨树也发出萧萧悲声。九月深秋寒霜凛冽，送我安葬在遥远的郊野。四下里看不见人烟居舍，高高的坟墓正巍然耸立。马儿仰天长嘶，风声也自顾萧条。幽暗的墓室一旦封闭，便千年不会再迎来晨光。千年不再见天日，纵是贤达之人也无可奈何。刚才来送葬的人，此刻各自回到了自己的家。亲戚或许还余留着悲伤，陌生路人却已经唱起了歌。死去又有什么可说的呢，且把躯体托付给青山一隅。
Appreciation
This is the third of Tao Yuanming's three Funeral Songs, and it is usually read as a dirge the poet wrote for himself. The whole burial is set out in plain description that moves from scene to event and from outside to inside: boundless waste grass and rustling poplars set the desolate key, harsh ninth-month frost carries the procession out to the far suburbs, and the horse crying at the sky and the self-desolating wind take on the mourners' feeling. The most famous couplet is the coolest: kinsmen may still hold some grief, but strangers are already singing, and in that flat contrast the whole truth about human attachment and about death is spoken. The last line turns grief into breadth, entrusting the body to a corner of the hills, so that a poet of the fields produces one of the most brooding and most liberated endings in early Chinese verse.
【白话串讲】 陶渊明提前给自己写挽歌：“荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧”。“向来相送人，各自还其家”——送葬的人，送完就各自回家了。“亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌”——他看透了生死，却写得不悲伤。 【意象与手法】 此诗以白描铺展送葬全程，由景及事、由外而内，视角独特——以死者之眼回望自己的葬礼。开篇「荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧」以坟茔传统意象设苍凉基调；「严霜九月中，送我出远郊」点明时令行程；「马为仰天鸣，风为自萧条」移情于物，马鸣风啸皆成哀音；「幽室一已闭，千年不复朝」直写墓室永闭；「亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌」以冷峻对比道尽人情凉薄与生死常理；结句「死去何所道，托体同山阿」化悲为旷，将个体生命归于一丘山阿。语言朴质如话，而「茫茫」「萧萧」等叠字声情并茂，于平淡中见深挚，是田园诗人少有的沉郁之作。 【情感与主旨】 此诗为陶渊明《挽歌诗》三首之三，约作于临终前后，是诗人预为自挽、参透生死之作。诗中写送葬、入土、亲悲人歌的全过程，表面冷静如旁观，实则把对死亡的思考推向极致：个体生命终将归于山阿大化，生前的功名、身后的哀荣皆不足道，唯有坦然委运、与自然同体。全诗体现了陶渊明「纵浪大化中，不喜亦不惧」的生死观，是魏晋玄学齐死生思想在诗中的最高体现，亦开文人自挽传统之先声。 【名句点睛】 常考「亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌」的冷峻对比与生死洞察；「托体同山阿」的旷达意蕴（化死为归、委运乘化）；「马为仰天鸣，风为自萧条」的移情手法；以死者视角写送葬的独特叙事；「白杨萧萧」承《古诗十九首》与汉乐府挽歌传统的意象渊源；此诗作为文人自挽之祖对后世生死书写的影响。
Background
Tao Yuanming's Funeral Songs are three in number, and this is the third, written about the time when he felt his end approaching in old age, or else composed in advance as a dirge for himself. The poet writes the scene of a burial with a detached brush: waste grass, white poplars, harsh frost and the far suburbs together render the bleakness of the procession. Commentators have long held that the poem does not mourn another person at a particular moment but is the poet's own dirge, written by a man who had seen through life and death. At the turn between Jin and Song the broad-mindedness of Laozi and Zhuangzi mingled with the Buddhist sense of impermanence, and Tao Yuanming used the funeral-song form to state the view of life and death he expressed elsewhere as riding the current of the great transformation without joy and without fear. The date cannot be fixed with certainty, but it belongs broadly to his last years of retirement, poverty and illness at the turn from Jin to Song.
陶渊明（约365—427），字元亮，一名潜，字渊明，浔阳柴桑（今江西九江）人，东晋末至南朝宋初的杰出诗人。他早年曾任江州祭酒、镇军参军、彭泽令等职，因不愿「为五斗米折腰」，于义熙元年（405）弃官归田，此后二十余年躬耕自给、固穷守节。《挽歌诗》共三首，此为第三首，约作于宋文帝元嘉四年（427）临终前后，与《自祭文》同为诗人自挽之作。据萧统《陶渊明传》，渊明「自知将命，必生有表」，临终前自拟挽歌、自写祭文，坦然安排后事，此诗正是其「纵浪大化中，不喜亦不惧」生死观的最后实践。魏晋之际，老庄齐生死、任自然的哲学风行，士人好作挽歌自挽以显旷达（如《世说新语》载袁山松出游好令左右歌挽），陶渊明承此风气而更进一层：其挽歌不作惊人之语，不求解脱之方，只以平实的笔触写送葬、入土、亲悲人歌的日常，于平淡中见出对死亡的彻底看透。诗成后不久，渊明即卒，年六十三，此诗遂成其绝笔之一。
Art
The poem lays out the whole course of a burial in plain description, moving from scene to event and from the outward world inward. 'The wild grass—how boundless it spreads; the white poplars too sigh and rustle' sets a desolate key at once. 'The horse lifts its head to heaven and neighs; the wind of itself blows desolate' transfers feeling to things, so that the neighing and the wind alike become sounds of grief. The ending, 'Kinsmen may keep some grief remaining; other men have already taken up their songs', uses a cool contrast to state both the thinness of human attachment and the ordinary law of life and death; and the last line, entrusting the body to become one with the hillside, turns grief into breadth and returns a single life to one fold of the hills. The language is plain as speech, yet deep feeling shows through the plainness. It is a rare brooding work from a pastoral poet, and it opened the way for the funeral songs of the Tang.
此诗最独特的艺术成就，在于以「死者」为抒情主体的叙事视角。全诗十八句，按送葬的时间流程展开：开篇四句写殡前之境，「荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧」以坟茔传统意象铺开苍凉基调，「严霜九月中，送我出远郊」点明时令与行程；中幅写送葬之状，「四面无人居，高坟正嶕峣」写墓地的荒寂，「马为仰天鸣，风为自萧条」移情于物，以马鸣风啸写天地同哀；后幅写葬后之情，「幽室一已闭，千年不复朝」直写墓室永闭，「贤达无奈何」将个体的死亡推向人类共通的命运；末六句写送者散归，「亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌」以冷峻的对比写人情之常，「死去何所道，托体同山阿」以旷达之语收束。诗人写自己的葬礼，却如旁观者般冷静，全无哀戚之辞，这正是「以哀景写达情」的极致：愈是惨淡的死亡图景，愈见其对生死的超然。语言上纯用白描，无一字雕琢，而「茫茫」「萧萧」「嶕峣」等叠字、双声词的运用，使画面声情并茂；对比手法（亲悲人歌、生前身后）贯穿全篇，把死亡这一终极命题写得既具体又通透。
Allusions
The poem uses allusion very sparingly and yet reaches far. 'I entrust my body to become one with the hillside' transforms the sense of the Songs of Chu, Summons of the Soul, where the soul is called back to its old dwelling, and of Zhuangzi's saying that death and life are matters of destiny, giving the flesh over to the hills, which agrees with the poet's lifelong wish to retire to the fields and lodge himself among mounds and valleys. The white poplar, from the Han Music Bureau songs Dew on the Shallots and Haoli onward, had been an image of the graveyard, and the rustling of the wind in it continues the tradition of the Nineteen Old Poems, where 'the white poplars are full of mournful wind'. Although there is no obvious out-of-the-way allusion, every line answers the classics of the funeral-song form, and death and life are written through ordinary images, showing the excellence of Tao's verse in using allusion where there seems to be none.
《挽歌诗》用典极省，而处处承袭挽歌文学的传统意象。「荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧」直承汉代挽歌《薤露》（「薤上露，何易晞」）、《蒿里》（「蒿里谁家地，聚敛魂魄无贤愚」）的坟茔意象，更与《古诗十九首》「驱车上东门，遥望郭北墓。白杨何萧萧，松柏夹广路」一脉相承——白杨萧萧自汉以来即是墓地定景，陶诗「白杨亦萧萧」正是此传统的凝练再现。「马为仰天鸣」化用《礼记·檀弓》「马鸣」及汉代丧礼「执绋」「牵马」之仪，亦暗合蔡邕《短人赋》以来以马写哀的笔法。「托体同山阿」之「山阿」出自《楚辞·山鬼》「若有人兮山之阿」，然其精神实源于庄子「以天地为棺椁」的旷达与「大块载我以形，劳我以生，佚我以老，息我以死」的安时处顺之说——把死看作归入自然大化、与山陵同体，正是玄学「齐死生」观念的诗化表达。陶渊明《形影神》诗「纵浪大化中，不喜亦不惧」、《自祭文》「陶子将辞逆旅之馆，永归于本宅」，与此诗「托体同山阿」互相发明，构成其完整的生死观体系。全诗用典不露痕迹，如盐入水，正见陶诗「质而实绮」之本色。
Commentary
Su Shi's judgement that Tao's verse is 'plain yet in fact patterned, spare yet in fact rich' is nowhere better shown than in the Funeral Songs. Zhong Rong, in Gradations of Poets, called Yuanming 'the ancestor of all recluse poets, past and present'. Zhu Xi of the Song said that his plainness 'issues from what is natural'. Shen Deqian of the Qing included this poem in Sources of Ancient Poetry and exclaimed that 'the last two lines write out the whole feeling of life and death; this is indeed a man who has seen through'. Wang Fuzhi, in Talks on Poetry from the Ginger Studio, said that Master Tao's funeral songs 'write a liberated feeling through a mournful scene, and so seem all the richer'. Later ages generally treat the poem as the ancestor of the literati self-dirge, and its influence reaches as far as Bai Juyi's Singing of Myself and similar Tang pieces.
苏轼论陶诗，谓「渊明作诗不多，然其诗质而实绮，癯而实腴」，此评于《挽歌诗》尤为贴切：十八句白描如话，而其中死生之思的厚度，远非辞藻华丽者可比。钟嵘《诗品》列渊明为「古今隐逸诗人之宗」，然此诗所写非隐逸之乐而是死亡之思，可见陶诗境界不止于田园，其于人生终极问题的通达，正是其「隐逸」精神的根柢。朱熹称其「平淡出于自然」，沈德潜《古诗源》录此诗，叹曰「末二句写尽死生之情，的是达人」；王夫之《姜斋诗话》更拈出「以哀景写达情，反觉其厚」之妙，道破此诗「哀而不伤、悲而能旷」的美学特质。就文学史而言，《挽歌诗》确立了文人自挽的传统：后世白居易《自咏》、陆游《示儿》、文天祥《正气歌》的生死书写皆承其绪，而渊明以「亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌」的冷峻洞察，把死亡从个人的哀恸中解放出来，上升为对人类普遍命运的静观，其思想深度在当时挽歌文学中无出其右。今人论陶诗者，多以此诗与其《归园田居》《饮酒》并观，见其「人境」与「生死」两端，方是完整渊明。
Prosody
Line by line
荒草何茫茫，白杨亦萧萧。
How boundless the wild grass, and how mournfully the white poplars sigh.
荒野里长满茫茫无际的枯草，白杨树也发出萧萧的悲声。
The wild cemetery grass stretches out endlessly, and the white poplars send forth their mournful soughing.
开篇即以两组叠字铺开墓地的苍凉全景。「茫茫」写荒草之无际，「萧萧」写白杨之悲声，一静一动、一形一声，把「九月中」的墓地写得既空阔又凄清。「何」字与「亦」字是两句的枢纽：「何」以感叹领起，见出荒草之多到令人心惊；「亦」字则暗示白杨萧萧并非今日始然，而是亘古如斯——生者眼中的一次葬礼，在坟茔的世界里不过是无数次重复中的一次。「白杨萧萧」自《古诗十九首》「白杨何萧萧」以来即是墓地的经典意象，陶渊明直用其意而更添「茫茫」的荒草作衬，使画面愈显辽阔苍茫。两句以最简的景物写出最深的哀感，却无一字言情，正是陶诗「以景写情、不著一字」的本色，也为全诗定下冷静而苍凉的基调。
The poem opens on two reduplicatives that set the desolate scene of the graveside. 'Boundless' measures the reach of the dead grass while 'soughing' renders the sound the poplars make—one static, one auditory, one visual, one sonorous. The word 'how' gives an exclamation of shock at the emptiness, while 'also' suggests the poplars have sighed this way since time out of mind, so that one burial is merely one repetition among countless funerals. The white poplar as an emblem of the grave descends from the Nineteen Old Poems; Tao adds the boundless grass to widen the waste. No word names grief, yet grief fills the frame—the very restraint that defines Tao's elegiac manner.
马为仰天鸣，风为自萧条。
The horses neigh up to the sky, and the wind goes on bleak and desolate of its own accord.
拉车的马仰天长嘶，秋风也自顾自地呼啸萧条。
The funeral horses toss their heads and whinny at the sky, while the autumn wind moons on, bleak and cheerless, as if for itself.
中幅以移情之笔写天地同哀，是全诗情感最饱满处。「马为仰天鸣」写挽车之马仰天长嘶，「风为自萧条」写秋风兀自萧瑟，马与风本无情之物，在此皆成了哀悼的参与者——「为」字轻轻一点，把哀情从人推及物，马鸣风啸仿佛都在为死者悲鸣。此句之妙有二：其一，以物写情，不直写人之哀，而哀自弥漫于天地之间，比直抒胸臆更见深沉；其二，「自萧条」之「自」字，又暗含一层冷静——风本无情，其萧瑟与人事无关，哀与不哀，皆在人心。这层「物自无情、人自多情」的张力，正与末段「亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌」的冷峻形成呼应：天地不仁，人情易淡，唯有死者长埋地下。两句移情与冷观并置，是陶渊明「哀而不伤」生死观的初次显现。
Here grief is projected onto the inanimate world, and it is the poem's most emotionally charged moment. The horses pullers of the hearse—cry out toward heaven, and the wind blows bleakly, as though both had joined the mourning. The small particle 'for' turns beasts and weather into participants in grief. Yet the word 'of its own accord' introduces a countervailing coldness: the wind is indifferent; its bleakness has nothing to do with human sorrow. This tension—things grieving, yet things being indifferent—foreshadows the poem's later, colder insight that relatives still grieve while others already sing. It is the first emergence of Tao's vision of mourning that feels deeply without being shattered.
亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌。
Kinfolk may still carry some remnant of sorrow, but other people are already singing.
亲戚或许还残留着悲伤，其他人却已经唱起了歌。
Relations may retain a little sadness still, while those more distant have already begun to sing again.
此二句是全诗最冷峻的洞察，也是千古传诵的名句。送葬之人各自还家之后，亲戚或许还留着一点悲伤，而「他人」（与死者无干的路人、邻人）却已如常歌唱——死亡的哀恸转瞬即逝，世界照常运转。陶渊明以「或」字写亲戚之悲的「也许」「残留」，以「已」字写他人之歌的「即刻」「已然」，一缓一疾、一有余一已尽，把人情之凉薄与生命之孤独写到入骨。然此句并非愤世嫉俗之语，而是以旁观者的冷静看透生死常理：他人的歌不是无情，而是生命本能的继续；死者已矣，生者还要生活。这份「看透」既含淡淡的悲凉，更有深深的旷达——正因为知道身后不过如此，才更要活好当下。两句以最平淡的口吻写最残酷的真相，是陶诗「癯而实腴」的绝佳注脚。
These two lines are the poem's bleakest insight and its most celebrated. After the funeral, each mourner returns home: relatives may keep a lingering grief, but 'other people'—neighbors and strangers untouched by the death—have already resumed their songs. The word 'may' measures the faintness of familial sorrow, while 'already' marks the instant recovery of the indifferent world. The contrast—one still lingering, one already done—states with cruel precision how thin and brief grief is, and how alone the dead become. Yet it is not a bitter line: it is the calm recognition that life must continue, and that to know this is to live more fully in the present. Its plainness conceals an almost unbearable truth.
死去何所道，托体同山阿。
What is there to say of death? We but entrust our body to the hollows of the hills.
死去又有什么可说的呢，只把躯体托付给青山一隅。
What is there left to say of dying? We commit the body to lie at one with the mountain slopes.
结句是全诗的思想归宿，以一问一答收束全篇。「死去何所道」以反问作结：死亡既已如此，还有什么可说的？这一问把前文所有的景物、哀情、冷眼统统收拢，化为一声平静的叹息。「托体同山阿」则给出答案：把躯体托付给山陵丘壑，与天地同体、与自然同化。「托」字用得极妙——死亡不是终结，而是「托付」，是归还，是把从自然借来的形体还给自然，正合庄子「以天地为棺椁」的旷达与陶渊明「纵浪大化中，不喜亦不惧」的一贯思想。「山阿」一词更使死有了归宿感：不再恐惧幽室之闭、千年不朝，而是安然归于青山。两句以极平淡的话写出极通透的生死观，哀感尽消而达观自见，与《自祭文》「永归于本宅」同一精神，是陶渊明留给后世最平静也最有力的临终告白。
The closing couplet gives the poem its philosophical resting place through a question and an answer. 'What is there to say of death?' gathers all the scenery, sorrow, and cold observation of the foregoing lines into one quiet sigh. The answer—'we entrust our body to the hollows of the hills'—uses the verb 'entrust' with particular force: death is not annihilation but a returning, a giving back to nature what nature lent. It echoes Zhuangzi's wish to be buried in the cosmos and Tao's own line about drifting in the great transformation without joy or fear. The mountain hollow becomes a home rather than a prison. The lines dissolve grief into equanimity and remain, among Tao's works, the calmest and most powerful leave-taking.
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Both are Yuanming's; one writes the joy of returning to the fields, the other the breadth of yielding to the course of things, and together they show his reclusion and his view of death.
《归园田居》其一「少无适俗韵，性本爱丘山」写弃官归田、返璞归真的欣悦，「久在樊笼里，复得返自然」以归鸟意象写自由；《挽歌诗》则写死亡——归田是「返自然」于生前，托体是「返自然」于死后，二者恰是陶渊明「自然」哲学的一体两面：生前回归田园躬耕，死后回归山阿大化，生与死皆是回归。情感上，《归园田居》欢欣明快，《挽歌诗》平静苍凉，然其底层的价值取向完全一致——不以功名为念、不以外物为累，生死皆任自然。合观二诗，可见陶渊明「隐逸」二字并非消极避世，而是包含了对生命全程（含死亡）的透彻安顿，其精神之完整，为中国士大夫提供了最高级的生存范本。
饮酒·其四 Drinking Wine, No. 4 陶渊明 · 同作者同风格，可见陶诗质实绮腴的一贯风貌 Same (same author and style: plain and natural)Both use plain, solid language to carry lasting meaning, showing the constant character of Tao's verse as plain yet in fact patterned.
《饮酒》其四（「栖栖失群鸟，日暮犹独飞」）以失群之鸟写人生飘零，结句「托身已得所，千载不相违」写最终找到栖身之所（田园）的安定；《挽歌诗》结句「托体同山阿」与之遥相呼应——「托身」于田园是生之所归，「托体」于山阿是死之所归，一鸟一墓、一生一死，皆以「托」字写安顿，足见陶渊明对「归宿」问题的执著思考一以贯之。语言上，二诗皆质实如话而意蕴深长，白描、叠字、比兴的运用如出一辙，正是苏轼所谓「质而实绮，癯而实腴」的同一风貌。对读二诗，可见陶渊明从青年求仕、中年归隐到晚年面对死亡的精神历程，其思想之圆融，在魏晋诗人中堪称独一无二。
咏史 On History 左思 · 同出魏晋，一咏史一自挽，可见魏晋诗风之两面 Different (same period but different subject: one sings of history, the other is a self-dirge)Both come from the Wei-Jin age, one taking history and the other the self as subject; compare the density of their allusion and the direction of their feeling.
左思《咏史》八首借历史人物（冯唐、主父偃、段干木等）抒怀才不遇之愤，「世胄蹑高位，英俊沉下僚」直斥门阀制度，慷慨激昂，用典繁密，是魏晋「咏史」体从咏古事转向咏怀抱的标志；陶渊明《挽歌诗》则撇开历史，直面一己之死，白描如话，用典几近于无，平静通透。二诗一为愤世之作、一为达观之作，恰可见魏晋士人精神的两种取向：左思以不平之气抗争门阀，陶渊明以旷达之怀安顿生死；艺术上一繁一简、一激一淡。同处晋宋之际的乱世，左思选择「抗争」，渊明选择「超越」，而超越者往往走得更远——陶诗对后世的影响（尤其宋人）远过左思，正说明以简驭繁、以淡写深的艺术力量。