xún寻yǐn隐zhě者bú不yù遇

A hermit is someone who will not take an official post and lives in the hills instead. In this poem the poet goes into the mountains to visit a hermit but does not find him. We do not know when it was written or who the hermit was. The poem is usually given to Jia Dao. One old book lists it instead as a poem by Sun Ge, under a different title, "Visiting Master Yang".

隐者是不愿做官、住在山林里的人。这首诗写诗人进山拜访一位隐者，却没有见到他。写作时间和这位隐者是谁都不清楚。这首诗一般认为是贾岛写的；也有古书把它算作孙革的诗，题目叫《访羊尊师》。

Jia Dao (779–843) came from Fanyang, near today's Zhuozhou in Hebei. As a young man he was a Buddhist monk. Later he left the temple to sit the civil service exams, but failed again and again, and stayed poor all his life. He chose every word with great care. The Chinese word for weighing your words, tuīqiāo (push-knock), comes from a story of him struggling to choose between "push" and "knock" in a line.

贾岛（779—843），字浪仙，范阳（今河北涿州一带）人。他年轻时当过和尚，后来还俗考进士，但屡试不中，一生很穷。他写诗特别讲究用字，“推敲”这个词就来自他反复琢磨用“推”还是“敲”的故事。

This poem is unusual. The poet asks several questions, but none of them is written down. We only hear the boy's answers. Still, we can guess the talk. "Is your master here?" "He went to gather herbs." "Where?" "Just on this mountain." "Where on the mountain?" "The clouds are too thick, I don't know." In twenty characters we get a whole conversation. The poet's mood moves step by step from hope to a little disappointment. The green pines, white clouds and the old man gathering herbs also show how calm and lofty a hermit's life is, as if he lived among the clouds.

这首诗很特别，诗人问了好几个问题，却一个也没写出来，只写了小童的回答。我们可以猜出来：他先问“你师父在吗？”童子说“采药去了”；又问“去哪儿采药了？”答“就在这山里”；再问“在山的哪里？”答“云太深，不知道”。二十个字，就像一段对话。诗人从满怀希望到有点失望，心情一层层变化。青松、白云、采药的老人，又让人感到隐者生活的清静和高远，好像他就住在云里一样。