Lovely name, shame about the chills

The Wang River collection (2)

Glory Ridge

The birds are leaving here in flocks unending, 
The fall has grizzled hills beyond the hills. 
First climbing Glory Ridge, and then descending, 
My soul gets no respite from autumn chills. 

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Pei Di's poem at the same site (prose translation):

The sun sets and the pine wind rises; when we walk home, the dew on the grass is drying. The cloud-light invades our footprints; the green of the mountain rubs off on our clothes.

Pei Di’s poem has been praised for the detail of its observation: sunbeams shining through the clouds and reflecting off the scuffed footprints they leave behind on the grass.

Personally, I still prefer the elevated tone of Wang Wei. Determined to place his estate in a larger imaginative space, he looks at the autumn vista from the nicely-named Glory Ridge, and declares that it creates in him the very ultimate in pain and sadness. I find a lot of humour in his exaggerated responses to the landscape.

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华子冈

飞鸟去不穷，连山复秋色。

上下华子冈，惆怅情何极。