When weeding is at noon, sweat drips down the soil. Who knows that every grain of Chinese food is hard? Li Shen, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. Li Shen (772~846), a native of Wuxi (now Jiangsu) and a scholar of Yuanhe, was one of the advocates and practitioners of the New Yuefu Movement in the middle Tang Dynasty, and had close contacts with famous literati Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen. Yuan Zhen said that Li Shen said: "I gave my friend Li Gongchui, and I gave 2 new poems to Yuefu. The elegance is so-called, and it is not empty. The articles are combined with the times, and the songs and poems are combined with things." Obviously, Li Shen's poetic style is consistent with the style of "weeding at noon". Li Shen's poems, titled Two Antique Poems, are included in The Whole Tang Poem, which is also called Two Poems for Peasants. One of them is "Mow the grain at noon", and the other poem is: "A millet in spring will reap ten thousand seeds in autumn. There are no idle fields in the four seas, and farmers still starve to death. " The two poems have the same meaning.
Nie Yizhong, another poet in the Tang Dynasty, should be the real author of the poem "Mow the grass at noon every day". The main reasons for this statement are as follows: First, The Complete Poem of Tang Dynasty included these two five-character quatrains under the names of Nie Yizhong and Li Shen respectively, while Li Shen's Two Poems of Ancient Style had no explanation of mutual understanding, while after Nie Yizhong's Two Poems of Tianjia, a footnote was added, saying that four sentences, such as "Mowing the grass at noon", were used as Li Shen's poems. Later, people chose to pay attention to Nie Yizhong's poems and simply did not take the four sentences of "weeding", which caused misinformation. Second, photocopying the Song Dynasty engraving "Quan Fang Bei Zu" and listing the poem "Hoe Wo" under the name of Nie Yizhong, and the full text of the poem "Two Poems of Tian Jia" is as follows: "Father plowed the original field, and the son cut the mountain and went to waste; In June, the grain did not show, and the butler had repaired the warehouse. When weeding is noon, sweat drops down the mountain; Whoever reads Chinese food on the plate has a hard time. Sell new silk in February and new valley in May; Cured the sore in front of my eyes, but gouged out my heart. I wish the king's heart would turn into a bright candle; Not according to Kirara's banquet, just according to the escape house. " However, this book only contains four sentences, such as "planting a millet in spring", under the name of Li Shen, which shows that the ancients awarded this poem to Nie Yizhong. Third, Nie Yizhong (837~? ), the word Tan Zhi, Hedong (today's Shanxi Yongji West) people, Xian Tong Jinshi. "Chronicle of Tang Poetry" said: "(Nie Yizhong) worked hard to prepare for the bitter taste, which was especially hard." Nie Yizhong was born in poverty, and only worked as a county magistrate and a petty official after he became an official. He had a better understanding of farmers' sufferings, so he had such poems that were close to life. Nie Yizhong's poems are included in Quantang Wen * * *, and poems on such topics as Tian Jia account for a quarter. It seems that the author of the poem "Mow the grass in the afternoon" must belong to Nie Yizhong.
Both of the above statements are reasonable, but it is generally believed that the author is Li Shen, but it is not conclusive.