Home › Poems › Seeking the Recluse but Not Finding Him
Xún Yǐn Zhě Bù YùSeeking the Recluse but Not Finding Him 寻隐者不遇
Jia Dao's conversation with a boy under the pines.
Original Chinese text with pinyin
松下问童子
sōng xià wèn tóng zǐ
言师采药去
yán shī cǎi yào qù
只在此山中
zhǐ zài cǐ shān zhōng
云深不知处
yún shēn bù zhī chù
Simplified characters; traditional title: 尋隱者不遇.
English translation
I ask your lad under the pines.
He says, "My master has gone for herbs.
He is somewhere in these mountains,
But clouds are deep — I know not where."
Original translation by Poetune — literal but poetic, written for this site.
Line by line
Meaning and imagery
The whole poem is a dialogue, but we hear only the answers: three replies to three unspoken questions. The hermit never appears, yet his presence fills the poem — the pines, the herbs, the cloud-wrapped mountain describe him. Being unable to find him is itself the point: the recluse has dissolved into nature.
Background
Attributed to Jia Dao (some sources give Sun Ge). Visiting a hermit and missing him was a favorite theme in Tang poetry.
Key words
- 童子 tóng zǐ
- a boy servant
- 采药 cǎi yào
- gathering medicinal herbs
- 云深 yún shēn
- deep among the clouds
About the poet: Jia Dao
Jia Dao, once a Buddhist monk, was famous for agonizing over single words; the Chinese term for careful revision, "tuiqiao" (push or knock), comes from a story about him. His poems are austere and quiet.
Lifetime: 779–843. Other famous works: Seeking the Recluse but Not Finding Him (寻隐者不遇).