What is this?
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(lǜ yáng yīn lǐ bái shā dī)
In English:
In the shade of the green poplar against the white sand embankment
What is this?
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(qiǎn cǎo cái néng mò mǎ tí)
In English:
The bright grass is finally able to cover up the horse hooves prints
What is this?
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(luàn huā jiàn yù mí rén yǎn)
In English:
Disorderly flowers gradually charm the eye
Many of the English translations online translated this line a little differently to: “Disorderly flowers have grown almost enough to confuse the eye.” However, I thought this seemed a little out of place. The word “迷" by itself means to bewilder or to confuse. However, “迷人” together means to charm.
Therefore, the phrase “迷人眼” can mean one of two things:
1. to confuse people’s eyes
2. to charm the eye
Given that 白居易 was tackling a pretty picturesque scene, I chose to go with the second meaning.
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(shuí jiā xīn yàn zhuó chūn ní)
In English:
By every house, new swallows peck at spring mud
The first four characters mean “someone’s new swallows”. this implies that it must be the swallows new to someone’s house as they are pecking at the spring mud to build new nests.
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(jǐ chù zǎo yīng zhēng nuǎn shù)
In English:
In a few places, early orioles are struggling for the warm trees
“莺” is the Chinese word for the oriole bird.
“A few places” indicates the reasons for the oriole birds to struggle for the warm trees, as they are also “early”.
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(shuǐ miàn chū píng yún jiǎo dī)
In English:
The water’s surface is first calm, the clouds low
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(gū shān sì běi jiǎ tíng xī)
白居易sets his scene.
In English:
Between the the Lonely Mountain Temple to the north and the Jia Pavilion to the west
Gushan, standing between the two lakes (the inner and outer lakes), is so called because it is not linked with any other hills. Gu in Chinese 孤 literally means “isolated, solitary”.
The line refers to a small area between Gushan Temple and Jia Pavilion. Jia 贾 is a surname of an official named Jia Quan who held office in Hangzhou during the years between 785 and 804, and who built a pavilion there which was later named after him.
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Bai Juyi (772–846), or Bo Juyi, was a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, as well as a government official.
Burton Watson says of Bai Juyi:
He worked to develop a style that was simple and easy to understand, and posterity has requited his efforts by making him one of the most well-loved and widely read of all Chinese poets, both in his native land and in the other countries of the East that participate in the appreciation of Chinese culture. He is also, thanks to the translations and biographical studies by Arthur Waley, one of the most accessible to English readers
钱唐湖春行 (Qián tánghúchūn xíng) or “A Visit to Qiantang Lake in Spring” depicts a peaceful visit to Qiantang Lake, in vein with his plain, direct, and easily comprehensible style of writing.
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(zuì ài hú dōng xíng bù zú)
In English:
This translation was hard to pin down. The words: 最(most)，爱(love)，胡(lake)，东(east),行(to go)，and 不足(inadequate) string together to form like the literal translation above, but I wonder if it means something more like this:
To me so lovable, as however many times are not enough to have a walk there, is the east of lake,
where beneath the green poplar’s shade, stretches an embankment of white sand.
144
In ancient China, the character 爱, which is now often translated or understood as love, has almost never meant “love (romantic or fraternal)”. It may be even said that “爱” (“love”) is not used as a noun let alone pronoun. So 最爱 (most “love”) could not mean “my beloved”, and it should mean “I like most (doing) sth.”. Here, it mean “I love most walking east of the lake and could not feel tired”. 不足，not enough, insatiable.