Inscription: (left to right)
This world, who possesses it?
Tranquil is this place, long separated from the dusty world.
An endless cascade soars as if a flock of egrets,
the surface of a boundless lake ripples like the scales of a fish.
Skiffs float beyond tree tops and thatched eaves,
a screen of spired peaks stands at the clouds’ edge.
Why not share these fishing shallows with a throng of gulls?
Oh how I long to visit Yan Ling at Fuchun!
Inscribed by Shun’u
(Transcribed and translated by Aaron Rio)
In the last line "Yan Ling" may be interpreted either as a person or a place: Yan Ziling (厳子陵), the hermit who fished in a rocky shallows in the Fuchun mountains, and the shallows themselves that came to be (and still are) dubbed the "Yan Ling Shallows" (厳陵瀬).