满庭芳·归去来兮，清溪无底 Come Home, Come Home

Chinese original:

满庭芳·归去来兮，清溪无底 苏轼 

(余谪居黄州五年，将赴临汝，作《满庭芳》一篇别黄人。既至南都，蒙恩放归阳羡，复作一篇。）

归去来兮，清溪无底，上有千仞嵯（rèn cuó）峨。画桥西畔，天远夕阳多。老去君恩未报，空回首、弹铗（jiá）悲歌。船头转、长风万里，归马驻平坡。

无何，何处是？银潢（huáng）尽处，天女停梭。问人间何事，久戏风波。顾谓同来稚子，应烂汝、腰下长柯。青衫破、群仙笑我，千缕挂烟蓑。

Come Home, Come Home

-to the tune “Courtyard in Full Bloom”

(I spent five years in exile in Huangzhou. Upon leaving for a new post in Linru, I composed a poem to the tune of“Courtyard in Full Bloom”— a farewell to the people of Huangzhou. After arriving at Nandu, I received imperial permission to return to Yangxian, and wrote another in the same tune.)

Chinese original: Su Shi (11^th Century)

English version: Julia Min ( Aug. 2026)

Come home, come home, you wandering soul —

I hear the stream, clear and deep beyond desire;

I see the mountains, green and high beyond hold.

A call from the crafted bridge on the west bank,

Where the setting sun paints with softest gold.

Yet how to repay the royal grace— such a regret!

To my Lord, I tapped the sword for a song of old.

Alas, turning south, my boat answers the call—

Like a steed dashing through a smooth slope，  

A long wind sails me thousands of miles for home.

Where is Land of Nothing, the land without woes?

Up above, end of Starry River in the blue dome，

The Weaver looks down, her shuttle on hold:

How do you like the rocky waves of human stage?

Why on earth muddle so long in a mortal place?

To the page boy on my side, she asks in repose:

Is the axe handle on your waist rotten long ago?

Beneath a grand crowd of celestials on the clouds,

Old Dongpo looks so ragged in a misty blue robe,

Torn by storm, tested by frost under a straw cloak.

Notes:

1. From Linru to Yangxian: Su Shi spent five years in exile in Huangzhou (1080–1085). Pardoned and offered a new post in Linru in 1084, he petitioned to retire to Yangxian and was granted permission while en route. The poem was written during his journey home. “Come home” echoes Tao Yuanming’s famous call to return.

2. The Weaver: The celestial Weaver, identified with Vega, pauses beside the Milky Way and looks down upon the mortal world. Her question gently mocks the ambitions and political struggles of human life.

Appreciation:

After five years of exile in Huangzhou, Su Shi could finally return to his dream home, Yangxian, where he owned land. Permission came just as he reached Shangqiu. The poem captures his deep relief: the prow turns, the wind rises, and the journey home opens before him.

The clear stream, towering cliffs, and painted bridge of Yangxian become more than a landscape of home: they suggest release after years of political confinement. His “Land of Nothing,” drawn from the Zhuangzi, carries the journey beyond worldly purpose, expectation, and calculations toward the freedom of simply being. The journey home thus becomes a Daoist return to the self beneath ambition and worldly roles.

Then the poem lifts playfully into the heavens. The Weaver looks down at the mortal who has spent so long playing on the stormy stage of the Song, wondering why anyone would linger so long in such a mortal world. The rotten axe-handle of Wang Zhi sharpens the joke: mortal time is brief, yet human beings can become so absorbed in its little dramas.

The opening “Come home, come home” was inspired by Yeats’s The Stolen Child: “Come away, O human child! / To the waters and the wild.” The kinship is striking—the pull of water and wilderness, weariness with the ordinary world, and the dream of freedom. Yet Yeats’s child is summoned away, while Su Shi summons himself home. For him, return is not escape but a recovery of the true self.

And then comes the delightful surprise: Old Dongpo, all ragged in his misty blue robe, standing before the immortals while they laugh at him. That laughter completes the poem’s Daoist wisdom. He does not become free by rising above the world, but by becoming more completely himself—amused by his own predicament and ready to return. To go home is, after all, not simply to reach a place, but to find the way back to the self that was there all along.

Reference:

1. baike.baidu.com