▲ Four Seasons Pastoral Miscellanies (I)
Southern Song Dynasty
Author Fan Chengda
content
Tilling during the day, numb at night,
The children in the village are responsible for their own affairs.
Children and grandchildren have not been liberated to engage in farming and textile,
And learn to grow melons in the shade of mulberry trees.
[Notes]
1. Miscellaneous interest: a poem written at will, with no fixed theme.
2. Farming: weeding.
3. Achievements of hemp: Twisting hemp into thread.
4. Responsible for each other: Everyone has a certain job.
5. Unsolved: I don't understand.
6. Provide: engage and participate.
[Brief analysis]
Pastoral Miscellanies of Four Seasons is a group of large-scale family poems written by the poet after he retired from his hometown. There are 60 poems in total, which describe the rural scenery and farmers' life in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and also reflect the exploitation and hardship of farmers. This is one of them, which describes a scene of rural summer life.
The first sentence "Going out to farm during the day, getting hemp at night" means: weeding in the field during the day and rubbing hemp thread at night. "Tillage" means weeding. In early summer, the seedlings need weeding. This is what men should do. "Ji Ma" refers to women who rub twine and weave cloth at night after finishing other work during the day. This sentence directly wrote the labor scene. The second sentence "Children in the village mind their own affairs", that is, "children" refers to men and women, and the whole poem uses the tone of an old farmer, and "children" refers to young people. "Being in charge" means that both men and women are not allowed to be idle and mind their own business. In the third sentence, "children and grandchildren are not prepared for farming and weaving", and "children and grandchildren" refer to those children who can neither farm nor weave, but are not idle. They have been in contact with and love labor since childhood, so they "learn to grow melons under the shade of mulberry trees" and learn to grow melons under the lush mulberry trees. This is a common phenomenon in rural areas, but it is quite distinctive. The conclusion shows the naive interest of rural children.
With a fresh style, the poet described the tense labor atmosphere in the early summer in the countryside in a more delicate way, which made it interesting to read.