"Long Song Xing" is a five-character ancient poem in the "Yuefu Poetry Collection" compiled by Guo Maoqian (1041-1099), a scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty. It is a famous poem that exhorts the world to cherish time and forge ahead. This poem uses scenery to express emotions and emotions to reason. It embodies the life philosophy of "young people don't work hard, old people are sad" in vivid images such as morning dew drying, autumn leaves falling, and hundreds of rivers flowing eastward, making the expressed philosophy Thought-provoking and easy to understand.
Changgexing Han Yuefu
The sunflowers in the green garden are waiting for the sun to set in the morning dew.
Budze in spring brings brilliance to all things.
I am often afraid that when the autumn festival comes, the yellow flowers and leaves will wither.
When hundreds of rivers reach the sea from the east to the sea, when will they return to the west?
If a young man does not work hard, the old man will be miserable!
① Changgexing: the name of a Han Yuefu tune.
②Kui: "Kui" as a vegetable name refers to one of the important vegetables in ancient my country. "The Book of Songs·Binfeng·July": "In July, Kui and Shu are harvested." Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" says that "Sunflower is a common food in ancient times, but it is quite rare today. There are two types of purple stems and white stems. It has white stems and small flowers with purple-yellow flowers. The smallest one is actually as big as the top of a finger, the skin is thin and flat, and the inner seeds are as light as elm seeds. "This poem is "Sunflower in the Green Garden". That means this. There is another herbaceous plant of the Compositae family also called "Kwai". Sunflower is one of them. In addition, palmetto can also be abbreviated. "Kui", the fan made from palmetto leaves is called "Kui fan".
③Morning dew: dew in the early morning. Xi: Dawn, extended to the sun shining.
④Yangchun: warm spring. Bu: Giving, giving. Deze: Favor.
⑤Autumn Festival: Autumn.
⑥焜黄: Describes the appearance of withered and yellow vegetation. Hua: Same as "flower". Bad: Pronounced "cuī", there was no "shuaī" sound in ancient times.
⑦ Baichuan: big river. Less: young. Lao: Old age.
⑧Disciple: In vain. [1]
This is a song that sings about life. Singing about people naturally starts from the sunflower in the garden. This is called "supporting things to rise" in writing, that is, "preface other things to trigger the words to be chanted." The sunflower in the garden stands gracefully in the spring morning, with dewdrops rolling on its green leaves, shining brightly in the morning sun, like a young man full of youthful vitality. The poet extended it from the vigorous growth of sunflower in the garden and wrote about the entire nature. Due to the sunshine, rain and dew in spring, everything is shining with the light of life, and there are vibrant and prosperous scenes everywhere. These four sentences are literally a tribute to spring. In fact, they are borrowing things to compare with people. They are a hymn to the most precious thing in life - youth. An era when life is full of youthful vitality is as beautiful as spring all year round. In this way, in terms of writing, it also has a metaphorical meaning, which is the so-called "Xingerbi".
The time sequence of nature is constantly changing. In the blink of an eye, spring passes and autumn comes. The sunflowers and everything else in the garden experience spring growth and summer growth. In autumn, they mature, and the formerly brilliant leaves turn yellow and wither. Loss of vitality. The same is true in life. We grow up from youth and old age, and we also have to go through a metabolic process. This is an immovable law of nature. The poet expresses his cherishment of the fleeting "youth" with "I am always afraid of the arrival of the autumn festival". One of the words "fear" shows people's powerlessness against the laws of nature and the inevitable withering of youth. Then from the change of time sequence to the endless time and boundless space of the universe, time is like a river passing eastward, never to return. Measured by the time scale, human life cannot be resurrected after death. In the face of this eternal nature, isn't life just like the dew on the leaves that is dried as soon as it sees the sun? Aren’t they just like the green sunflower leaves that wither and wither at the sound of autumn wind? The poem shifts from the exploration of the universe to thinking about the value of life, and finally comes to the deafening conclusion of "If a young man does not work hard, an old man will be sad", and ends the whole poem. This reasoning process is not written literally, but readers can follow the path of the poet's thinking and use their own life experiences to supplement it: all things in nature have a process of spring and autumn, and life also has a process of young people working hard and getting older. ; All things in nature can bear fruit in autumn as long as there is sunshine, rain and dew, but people are different. They cannot succeed without their own efforts. All things decay in autumn, but they realize the value of life, so they are not sad. This is not the case for people, because "Young people don't work hard" and old people achieve nothing, isn't it the same as walking through the world in vain? It is undoubtedly better to mobilize readers to think than to think for them. Precisely because of this, this poem avoids the boring life preaching, and makes the final aphorism appear powerful, deep and implicit, like the long tolling of a bell, deeply touching the hearts of readers. The word "tu" at the end of the sentence has a profound meaning: first, it means that the boss has no success, and life is wasted; second, it means that when you wake up in old age, you will not be able to help, and you can only sigh, which is intended to emphasize that you must work hard in time.
When reading this poem, we will naturally think of the famous saying in "How Steel Was Tempered" about how human life should be spent. "The most precious thing for a person is life. Everyone has only one life. Therefore, a person's life should be spent in this way: when he looks back on the past years, he will not regret for wasting time, nor be ashamed of having accomplished nothing; this way , when he is about to pass away, he can say frankly: I have dedicated my entire life and all my energy to the most magnificent cause in the world - fighting for the liberation of mankind." Guide readers to work hard in time. Don't waste your time, this attitude towards life is undoubtedly positive.
This is a masterpiece among the ancient Yuefu poems of the Han Dynasty. The poem uses a series of metaphors to illustrate that we should cherish time and work hard early. The first four lines of the poem describe to us a bright spring scene. The green sunflowers in the garden are still covered with dew. After the sun rises, the dew dries up, and the sunflowers are bathed in sunshine again. Everything in the world is blessed by the rain and dew of nature in spring, and glows with incomparable brilliance. However, when autumn comes, they all lose their bright luster and become withered and yellow. All things undergo ups and downs, and people also undergo a process from youth to old age. Time is like water in a big river, flowing eastward into the sea and never to return.
If we don’t cherish time and work hard when we are young and strong, we will only be sad in vain when we grow old!