White Dew

The watch drums from the garrison tower cut off all movement on the roads, and in the autumn of the frontier comes the lonely cry of a wild goose. From tonight onward, the season enters White Dew; yet the moon still seems brightest in my homeland. My brothers have all been scattered, and there is no home from which to ask whether they are alive or dead. The letters I send often fail to arrive—how much more so when the fighting has still not ceased.

This poem stands at the summit of poetry on the White Dew season. “戍鼓断人行” writes the desolation of wartime, while “边秋一雁声” gives the mournful cry of a lone goose on the autumn frontier. The contrast of “断”, “cut off,” and the solitary goose creates the bleakness of a world shaped by war. The second couplet, “露从今夜白，月是故乡明”, has become immortal. “露从今夜白” marks the arrival of White Dew through a natural seasonal phenomenon; “月是故乡明” allows subjective feeling to reshape objective reality. The moon is, of course, no brighter in one place than another, yet through the emotional projection of home, it appears incomparably luminous. The third couplet, “有弟皆分散，无家问死生”, directly writes the pain of brothers scattered by war and cut off from all news of one another. The final “寄书长不达，况乃未休兵” expresses the helplessness of letters unable to pass through a land still divided by warfare. The poem begins with the chill of White Dew and closes with the sorrow of wartime separation; the coolness of nature and the grief of human affairs become intertwined, making this one of the most emotionally profound poems associated with White Dew.