五代 Five Dynasties · 词 Ci lyric
清平乐·雨晴烟晚
Qingping Yue · Rain Cleared, Twilight Haze
雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满。
双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷。
黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯。
砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。
A pair of swallows flies into the courtyard of drooping willows; in the small pavilion the painted curtain is rolled high.
At dusk I lean alone on the red railing; the moon in the southwest is like a bent eyebrow.
Beneath the steps the fallen flowers lift in the wind, and my silk robe is specially cold in the spring.
Meaning
After rain the haze hangs late over a pond filled to the brim with green water. Swallows come flying into the willow courtyard, and in the small pavilion above them the painted curtain is rolled high. At dusk the speaker leans alone on the red railing, looking at the thin crescent moon in the southwest, while fallen flowers lift under the steps in the wind and the spring cold penetrates her silk robe. Everything outside proclaims return - the water is full, the swallows have come - and the speaker is the only person in the poem who has not moved.
雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满。双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷。黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯。砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。
Appreciation
[Plain Paraphrase] The poem is eight short lines: two of scenery, one of the speaker, one of the speaker's feeling. [Structure] It is organized as a slow narrowing - from the wide landscape (rain, haze, the whole pond) to the courtyard, to the pavilion, to the railing, to the silk robe - and that narrowing is the poem's argument. [Imagery] The first couplet is deliberately lively: the pond has filled, so the rain was generous; the swallows come flying in, and the curtain is rolled up so that the room opens onto the day. The third line turns, without any marked transition, to a person standing in that opened room. [Technique] The poem's central device is contrast without commentary. The swallows fly in pairs; the speaker leans alone. The moon, which is new, is also old, since it is the same moon she saw last year. The flowers fall while the water rises. The poet never says 'I am lonely'; the lonelyness is made of the gap between what is happening outside and what is happening to the person inside. [Language] The last line is the poem's most famous, and its two clauses report two facts - the wind rising, the robe cold - and leave the reader to supply the feeling.
【白话串讲】 冯延巳写《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》：“雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满”——“双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷”——“黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯”——“砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒”——他写雨晴烟晚——罗衣特地春寒。 【意象与手法】 “雨晴烟晚、绿水新池满”写雨晴烟晚；“双燕飞来垂柳院、小阁画帘高卷”写双燕飞来垂柳院；“黄昏独倚朱阑、西南新月眉弯”写黄昏独倚朱阑；结以“砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒”写罗衣特地春寒。清丽婉转。 【情感与主旨】 冯延巳写景闺怨之作，写黄昏独倚朱阑、罗衣特地春寒的春愁，是冯延巳词中的名篇。 【名句点睛】 常考“双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷”写垂柳画帘；“黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯”写独倚朱阑。
Background
Feng Yansi (903-960), courtesy name Zhengzhong, came from Guangling (modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu) and served the Southern Tang as a minister, rising to the post of chancellor. He is the most important writer of Southern Tang verse, and his place in the history of the genre is between the Tang and the Song: he brought the small ci of the late Tang to a wider emotional range and a more deliberate finish, and the Northern Song writers who followed him - Yan Shu, Ouyang Xiu - learned from him more than they knew. This piece, a short song to the tune 'Qingping Yue', is one of his best known and is frequently anthologized.
《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》为五代词人冯延巳所作词。冯延巳（903—960），字正中，广陵（今江苏扬州）人，五代南唐词人，官至宰相。此词写景闺怨，为雨后黄昏之作。词中「雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满」写雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满；「双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷」写双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷；「黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯」写黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯；「砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒」写砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。冯延巳此词以写景闺怨、罗衣特地春寒写其闺怨之情，清丽婉转，是冯延巳词中的名篇。此篇《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》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《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》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 poem's art is almost entirely a matter of restraint. Four techniques are at work. First, 以景写情 - the feeling is never named, and the reader is given a scene instead; even the closing 'specially cold' is a physical fact rather than an emotion. Second, the figure of the pair of swallows, which works as a 反衬: the birds return, and the speaker does not move, and no statement about loneliness is needed. Third, the two-in-one image of the moon: it is described at the same time as new (新月) and as familiar, because it is the same thin crescent she has watched from the same railing for years, and that double meaning is what makes the third couplet so compressed. Fourth, the last line's two clauses - the wind lifting the fallen flowers, the spring cold in the robe - which convert an emotion into weather and climate. What holds all of this together is the poem's refusal to explain: nothing in the eight lines tells the reader who the speaker is waiting for or why she is there.
此词艺术上以「清丽婉转、以景写情」见长。全词共八句，由雨晴烟晚而双燕飞来垂柳院而黄昏独倚朱阑。起「雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满」写雨晴烟晚：雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满；「双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷」写双燕飞来垂柳院：双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷；「黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯」写黄昏独倚朱阑：黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯；结「砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒」写罗衣特地春寒：砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。全词以景写情，由雨晴烟晚而罗衣特地春寒，清丽婉转，是冯延巳词中的名篇。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 poem's classical resources are light, which is a remark worth making: 朱阑, the red railing, is the standard emblem of the women's quarter in the song tradition - the railing from which a woman watches and waits - and its colour marks that this is a room of some wealth. 双燕, the pair of swallows, continue a long preference for paired birds as the figure of what the speaker lacks; the coming of spring swallows is the commonest of all Chinese images for return. 落花, fallen flowers, carries the whole tradition of spring's passing, and 罗衣, the silk robe, is the attire of the waiting woman rather than ordinary clothing. The one piece of deliberate allusion is the moon: 新月 is the thin crescent she will have seen on countless earlier evenings, so the poet uses a word for new to describe something that is also old.
词中「雨晴烟晚绿水新池满」「双燕飞来垂柳院小阁画帘高卷」「黄昏独倚朱阑西南新月眉弯」「砌下落花风起罗衣特地春寒」等语，皆含典故故实。「雨晴烟晚绿水新池满」写雨晴烟晚绿水新池满；「双燕飞来垂柳院小阁画帘高卷」写双燕飞来垂柳院小阁画帘高卷；「黄昏独倚朱阑西南新月眉弯」用朱阑之典（朱阑即红楼之栏，写闺中倚栏），写黄昏独倚朱阑西南新月眉弯；「砌下落花风起罗衣特地春寒」写砌下落花风起罗衣特地春寒。词人以朱阑、新月等语入词，不着痕迹，而把写景闺怨之情写得真切可感，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。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 short song has been one of the most frequently anthologized pieces of Southern Tang ci, and it is usually cited as an example of Feng Yansi's signature quality, 清丽婉转 - clear, whose feeling is never raised above ordinary voice. Later readers have been struck especially by the closing couplet, in which a physical sensation (the cold in the silk robe) is the whole poem's emotion. It is also often read as the beginning of the Southern Song style of the ci as a vehicle for a refined, indirect sadness, and it is compared regularly with Su Shi's 'Water Melody' and Liu Yong's 'Eight Beats of the Gansu arranged for a Xu Ying' - not for a shared subject but for a shared way of putting feeling into scene.
这首《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》，是冯延巳写写景闺怨之作，写雨晴烟晚、双燕飞来垂柳院、黄昏独倚朱阑、罗衣特地春寒之情，清丽婉转。起「雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满」——雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满。写雨晴烟晚：雨晴烟晚、绿水新池满——雨晴烟晚、新池满；「双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷」——双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷。写双燕飞来垂柳院：双燕飞来垂柳院、小阁画帘高卷——垂柳院、画帘高卷；「黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯」——黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯。写黄昏独倚朱阑：黄昏独倚朱阑、西南新月眉弯——倚朱阑、新月眉弯；结「砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒」——砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。写罗衣特地春寒：砌下落花风起、罗衣特地春寒——落花风起、特地春寒。这「砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒」，是全词之结：以罗衣特地春寒写其闺怨。全词清丽婉转，以景写情，正是冯延巳词中的名篇。综观全诗，情真、景切、理深，三者浑融无迹，故能于短短数语之中寄无限深意，令人百读不厌。其含蓄蕴藉之处，正是中国古典诗歌以少总多、言有尽而意无穷的美学精神的生动体现。
Prosody
Line by line
雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满。
The rain has cleared and the haze is late; green water fills the new pond.
雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满。
Rain clears, dusk grows misty; the green water brims the new-filled pond.
起句写雨晴烟晚，起笔即见其晚。「雨晴烟晚」写雨晴烟晚，「雨晴」写雨晴、「烟晚」写烟晚；「绿水新池满」写绿水新池满，「绿水」写绿水、「新池满」写新池满。一句写雨晴烟晚绿水新池满，以雨晴烟晚写烟晚、以绿水新池满写新池满，写尽雨晴烟晚、绿水新池满之情。以晚起兴，清丽而婉转，是「以晚起兴」的妙笔。此句以寥寥数语写尽深意，情韵兼胜，正是全诗点睛之笔。其于字句之间暗藏波澜，于平易之中寄寓曲折，尤当反复涵泳，方能得其三昧。
The opening writes the cleared rain and misty dusk, presenting the evening at once. 'Rain clears, dusk grows misty' gives the clearing and the misty dusk. 'The green water brims the new-filled pond' gives the green water and the brimming new pond. The line writes the cleared rain, misty dusk, and brimming pond, awakening through the evening, clear and winding, the exquisite stroke of 'awakening through the evening.'
双燕飞来垂柳院，
A pair of swallows flies into the courtyard of drooping willows,
双燕飞来垂柳院，
A pair of swallows flies into the courtyard of weeping willows,
此句写双燕飞来垂柳院，是全词写双燕之态的关键。「双燕飞来」写双燕飞来，「双燕」写双燕、「飞来」写飞来；「垂柳院」写垂柳院，「垂柳」写垂柳、「院」写院。一句写双燕飞来垂柳院，以双燕飞来写双燕飞来、以垂柳院写垂柳院，写尽双燕飞来垂柳院之情。以燕写景，清丽而婉转，是「以燕写景」的点睛之笔。此句以寥寥数语写尽深意，情韵兼胜，正是全诗点睛之笔。其于字句之间暗藏波澜，于平易之中寄寓曲折，尤当反复涵泳，方能得其三昧。
The line writes the pair of swallows flying into the willow court, the key to the lyric's portrait of the swallows. 'A pair of swallows flies in' gives the paired birds coming. 'The courtyard of weeping willows' gives the willow court. The line writes the paired swallows coming to the willow court, writing scenery through the swallows, clear and winding, the luminous point of 'writing scenery through the swallow.'
黄昏独倚朱阑，
At dusk I lean alone on the red railing,
黄昏独倚朱阑，
At dusk, alone, she leans on the red balustrade,
此句写黄昏独倚朱阑，是全词写倚阑之态的关键。「黄昏独倚」写黄昏独倚，「黄昏」写黄昏、「独倚」写独倚；「朱阑」用朱阑之典写朱阑，「朱」写朱、「阑」写阑。一句写黄昏独倚朱阑，以黄昏独倚写独倚、以朱阑写朱阑，写尽黄昏独倚朱阑之情。以栏写情，清丽而婉转，是「以栏写情」的点睛之笔。此句以寥寥数语写尽深意，情韵兼胜，正是全诗点睛之笔。其于字句之间暗藏波澜，于平易之中寄寓曲折，尤当反复涵泳，方能得其三昧。
The line writes leaning alone on the red rail at dusk, the key to the lyric's portrait of leaning. 'At dusk, alone, she leans' gives the solitary leaning in the dusk. 'The red balustrade' uses the allusion to the rail. The line writes the solitary leaning at dusk, writing feeling through the rail, clear and winding, the luminous point of 'writing feeling through the rail.'
砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。
Beneath the steps the fallen flowers lift in the wind, and my silk robe is specially cold in the spring.
砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒。
Below the steps, fallen flowers; the wind rises, and the silk robe feels the spring's chill anew.
结句写砌下落花风起，是全词立意的落点。「砌下落花风起」写砌下落花风起，「砌下」写砌下、「落花风起」写落花风起；「罗衣特地春寒」写罗衣特地春寒，「罗衣」写罗衣、「特地春寒」写特地春寒。一句写砌下落花风起罗衣特地春寒，以砌下落花风起写落花风起、以罗衣特地春寒写春寒，写尽砌下落花风起、罗衣特地春寒之情。以寒写情，清丽而婉转，是全词最动人处，也是「以寒写情」的点睛之笔。
The closing writes the wind of fallen flowers below the steps, the landing point of the lyric's aim. 'Below the steps, fallen flowers; the wind rises' gives the falling petals and the rising wind. 'The silk robe feels the spring's chill anew' gives the silk robe and the fresh spring cold. The line writes the wind of fallen flowers and the spring chill on the robe, writing feeling through the cold, clear and winding, the most moving passage of the lyric and the luminous point of 'writing feeling through the cold.'
Study
Word focus
Related Reading
Su Shi's long tune opens with the spring flowers and autumn moon, asks when they began, and moves through the moon's visit to the painted hall and the silk screen to the speaker's own insomnia; he closes by conceding that joys and sorrows, moon and parting, have been united since ancient times and resolves to be content with long nights. Feng Yansi's short song also moves from scenery to a figure leaning in a high place, and also ends on a perception - but there is no resolution at all: the spring cold simply seizes her. The first is a philosopher's poem, the other a poet's.
苏轼《水调歌头·明月几时有》「转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠」，写登楼感怀、清丽旷达，是宋词长调的名篇；冯延巳《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》则以「黄昏独倚朱阑，西南新月眉弯」「砌下落花风起，罗衣特地春寒」写倚朱阑、特地春寒。两词同写登楼感怀、清丽旷达：一写转朱阁低绮户、以朱阁写无眠，一写黄昏独倚朱阑西南新月眉弯、以朱阑写闺怨；一为苏轼之旷达、一为冯延巳之清丽，并读正可见词写「登楼感怀」的两种笔法，皆于登楼之中见清丽。
八声甘州·对潇潇暮雨洒江天 Eight Beats of the Gansu: Against the Drizzling Rain Splashing the Sky 柳永 · 同写倚楼凝望、清丽深婉，一写对潇潇暮雨洒江天、一写双燕飞来垂柳院小阁画帘高卷，皆于倚楼之中见凝望 Two poems of leaning on a high place in the rain; one a traveller's road, one a woman's roomLiu Yong's long tune begins 'against the drizzling rain that splashes the sky, a washing of the clear autumn' and puts the speaker on the river road, where the rain washes everything clean and the traveller leans over the water thinking of home. Feng Yansi's poem is the same scenery seen from inside - the rain has just stopped, the pond has filled, and the person leaning on the railing has no road to travel. The two are the classic pairing of Chinese poetry: the male journey and the female room, both written by men, both about waiting.
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」，写倚楼凝望、清丽深婉，是宋词写羁旅的名篇；冯延巳《清平乐·雨晴烟晚》则以「双燕飞来垂柳院，小阁画帘高卷」「雨晴烟晚，绿水新池满」写垂柳院、新池满。两词同写倚楼凝望、清丽深婉：一写对潇潇暮雨洒江天、以暮雨写清秋，一写双燕飞来垂柳院小阁画帘高卷、以双燕写闺怨；一为柳永之清丽、一为冯延巳之婉转，并读正可见词写「倚楼凝望」的两种笔法，皆于倚楼之中见凝望。