RELATED TOPIC:
TANG POETRY

RELATED TOPIC:
LI BO (701-762)

RELATED TOPIC:
DU FU (721-770)

"Fields and Gardens by the River Qi," by Wang Wei

I dwell apart by the River Qi,
Where the Eastern wilds stretch far without hills.

The sun darkens beyond the mulberry trees;
The river glistens through the villages.

Shepherd boys depart, gazing back to their hamlets;
Hunting dogs return following their men.

When a man's at peace, what business does he have?
I shut fast my rustic door throughout the day.

[Translation by Paul Rouzer]

Paul Rouzer :: Finally in the regulated verse in the last couplet or the fourth couplet, the poet usually summons up or sums up his own particular response to what he has said before, often with an emotional response.

Here Wang Wei responds to this particular agrarian paradise that he's described in the middle couplets. By responding how this particular scene causes a stillness in his heart allows him to cultivate his own self in a more Daoist and Buddhist way, and allows him to simply close his own door of his own retreat against the world outside.

Wang Wei has learned the particular lesson from the world around him and can at the very end withdraw within to himself. Not just withdraw into the very house that he is living in, but to withdraw into his own soul.