This sentence comes from Gao Qi's poem "Send Chen Xiucai back to the Tomb of Shashi Province" in Yuan Dynasty. The whole poem is as follows: It's sad to go home after the chaos. In the storm, pear flower falls died, and the Cold Food Festival passed. In Tomb-Sweeping Day, several families will visit graves and be worshipped by future generations. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a traditional major Spring Festival, which pays homage to graves and remembers ancestors. Sweeping the grave is a "tomb sacrifice", and the name for ancestors is "respecting the time". Tomb-Sweeping Day's returning to his hometown to worship his ancestors is a compulsory course for ancient people.
The first two sentences of the poem describe Chen Xiucai's return to his hometown, and then the poet himself will inevitably feel sad from it; The last two sentences imagine the scene in Tomb-Sweeping Day cemetery, which reflects the depression scene after the war at the end of Yuan Dynasty, and shows the poet's aversion to war and dissatisfaction with the rulers. This poem by Gao Qi depicts the rural depression after the Great War in the late Yuan Dynasty through a life in Tomb-Sweeping Day where no one offered sacrifices to sweep the barren graves. From another aspect, it also reflects the reality that Tomb-Sweeping Day's grave sweeping is a compulsory course for future generations and deceased ancestors. It would be very sad if there were no owners in the abandoned graves.