Moon reunion, star reunion, how can people not return? I was still listening to cuckoo crow this spring. See geese every year, fourteen times.
-[Song]? Linjiang Fairy in Zhu Dunru
Zhu Dunru was a famous patriotic poet in the early Song Dynasty. Many people will interpret this poem as yearning for their hometown and want to return to it. There is also a patriotic feeling of hoping that the court will recover lost ground. It seems that this is all right. But the appreciation of poetry should not be a little vague. Zhu Dunru is a native of Luoyang, but how can he be his hometown when he dreams of going back to the northern part of Liaohai and his soul is shattered? Such a remote place can only be a place where relatives displaced by war drift. Who is this relative? It is very necessary to talk about broken hair and broken mirror. Broken hairpin (bāichāi): hairpin is the headdress of ancient women, which is often used as a token of love, or as a proof of future reunion when separated. Bai Juyi's "Song of Eternal Sorrow": "But leave one hairpin, one side of the box, the gold and the shell of the box".
Broken mirror: According to the Records of Art and Literature, when Chen was dying in the Southern Dynasties, the son-in-law Xu Deyan and Princess Lechang each broke a bronze mirror, each holding half, which was the basis for reunion, and the result was correspondingly reunited. Broken hair and broken mirrors, often referring to the separation of husband and wife in war.
Really, if you want to read poetry well, it is very important to understand images.