A Spring Dawn 春晓

This is a translation of the poem 春晓 (Chūn Xiǎo), “A Spring Dawn”, by a famous Tang dynasty poet 孟浩然 (Meng Haoran). The poem is #232 in the collection 300 Tang Poems, and is also well-known by its first line: 春眠不觉晓 (Chūn Mián Bù Jué Xiǎo), which literally meaning:“In spring one sleeps, unaware of dawn.” Meng wrote the poem when he was living in seclusion on 鹿门山 (Lumen Mountain, located in Central China).In this poem, he grasped the moment when he woke up in a morning of spring and imagined a gorgeous picture in his mind. The poem is short; its artistic charm lies not in the gorgeous rhetoric, nor in unique techniques, but in its lasting appeal. The style of the whole poem is as natural as flowing clouds and water. For thousands of years, people have read and discussed it, as if in this short four-line poem contains an endless treasure of art.

Simplified Chinese (with Pinyin):

chūn xiǎo

春晓

táng mèng hào rán

唐 孟浩然

chūn mián bù jué xiǎo

春眠不觉晓，

chù chù wén tí niǎo

处处闻啼鸟。

yè lái fēng yǔ shēng

夜来风雨声，

huā luò zhī duō shǎo

花落知多少。