Dwelling by the Stream [Tang Poems]

— Liu Zongyuan

Tired of officialdom for long,

I’m glad to be banished southwest.

At leisure I hear farmer’s song;

Haply I look like hillside guest.

At dawn I cut grass wet with dew;

My boat comes o’er pebbles at night.

To and fro there’s no man in view;

I chant till southern sky turns bright.

Note

Liu Zongyuan (773–819 CE) was a leading poet, prose writer, and thinker of Tang Dynasty in ancient China, renowned for his introspective and often melancholic works shaped by political exile. A key figure in the Classical Prose Movement, Liu was banished to remote southern China after a failed reform attempt. During his decade-long exile in Yongzhou (modern Hunan), he turned to nature for solace, producing some of the most profound landscape poetry in Chinese literature – marked by stillness, clarity, and quiet sorrow.

One of his representative poems is “Living by the Stream” (Dwelling by the Stream or Xi Ju). In this deceptively tranquil poem, Liu describes his daily life in rustic seclusion: living next to an old farmer who tends his vegetables, sometimes he truly feels like a hermit dwelling in the mountains; At dawn, still drenched in dew, he goes out to hoe weeds, at dusk, drifts downstream by boat along the stream. On the surface, it reads like a peaceful retreat – but subtle hints reveal deeper pain. The poem masterfully blends serene imagery with unspoken grief, embodying the tension between outward calm and inner exile.

“Living by the Stream” is not an escape from the world, but a poetic confrontation with displacement – transforming loss into lyrical dignity.

溪居
— 柳宗元

久为簪组束，

幸此南夷谪。

闲依农圃邻，

偶似山林客。

晓耕翻露草，

夜榜响溪石。

来往不逢人，

长歌楚天碧。