We are all green leaves, sprouting in the spring when flowers are everywhere.
The sun shines and we grow stronger in an instant.
We are at ease in the short youth period when flowers are blooming. Playing,
It doesn’t matter whether the gods bring disaster or blessing.
The two gloomy goddesses of fate are always standing nearby,
One holds the bitter pill of "old age" in her hand,
The other holds "death" in his hands. The flowering period of youth is short,
at most it only lasts as long as the sun shines on the ground.
Once this time passes from you,
In an instant, it will be better to die than to live.
Because there will be many troubles in your heart. By then,
The family's wealth will be exhausted, poverty is a hard thing,
In addition, there are no children, and the heart is unwilling,
It would be better to fall to the ground. Entering the underworld,
and suffering from disease. Who in the world
Zeus would not inflict many disasters on him.
(Translated by Shui Jianfu)
Appreciation
Mimnel Moss is a musician who is good at playing the flute. He sang the joy of youth with flute songs and lamented the shortness of life. "We Are All Green Leaves" is an elegiac poem. "Elegy" does not mean that its content is sad, but its form. Early Greek lyric poetry was generally used for singing, often accompanied by orchestral instruments when singing, and was divided into two major branches: flute songs and piano songs. Around the 7th century BC, a lyric poetry style called "Eleg style" appeared, which was generally called elegy in later generations. But it is very likely that Ellega means "flute song". It is a couplet consisting of a line of hexameter plus a line of iambic pentameter, with flute accompaniment.
The title of this poem by Mimnel Moss is derived from Homer's poem "Each generation is like a fallen leaf", in which fallen leaves are used as a metaphor for the metabolism of the human world. Homer wrote this in the sixth volume of "The Iliad": "Majestic Diomedes, why do you ask about my family background? / Just as the leaves bloom and wither, so do the human generations, / The autumn wind scatters the dead leaves Falling on the ground, when spring comes, many new green leaves will grow in the forest, and so will human beings, withering from generation to generation. "Homer's epic poems, especially "The Iliad", often contain such lyrical poems. verse or paragraph. Starting from this poem by Homer, many later poets imitated and developed this theme, among which Mimner Moss's "We Are All Green Leaves" is one of them.
In this imitation poem, we hear the poet's lament about the shortness and bittersweetness of life, with sentimental and helpless emotions. The poet compares youth to green leaves, and compares the carefree but fleeting youth to the season of blooming flowers. Although the flower season is beautiful, it is like a flash in the pan; youth is beautiful, but it can never escape the control of the two goddesses of fate, who represent aging and death respectively. As soon as a person is born, the footsteps of the goddess of destiny are approaching step by step. This is a fact that no one can resist and cannot do anything about. The flowering period of youth is "at most as long as the sun shines on the ground." However, are the rest of the days as simple as when people sleep after sunset?
The poet's next description is in great contrast to the above expectations. In the poet's writing, once youth disappears, people can be said to be worse off than dead. Accompanying it are only the poverty of losing all the family wealth, the loneliness of having no heirs, and the torment of old age and diseases. The contrast between the beauty of the flowering period of youth and the suffering after it more and more highlights the preciousness and shortness of youth, as well as the long and difficult time of losing youth. Although the poet does not write much, there is no doubt that the message between the lines is conveying to everyone: Youth is gorgeous and colorful but fleeting. People, seize your youth and enjoy yourself in time; don’t wait until your youth is gone, leaving regrets and sighs in vain.
(Yang Li)