To shoot a man, shoot a horse first; to capture a thief, capture the king first.
From "Nine Poems for Going Out of the Fortress·Sixth" by Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty
When you draw your bow, you should use your strength, and when you use arrows, you should use your length.
To shoot a man, shoot a horse first; to capture a thief, capture the king first.
There is a limit to killing people, and all countries have their own borders.
If you can control the invasion of the mausoleum, how can you kill more
Translation
When you draw a bow, you must draw the hardest one, and when shooting an arrow, you must shoot the longest one. To shoot a man, you must first shoot a horse; to capture a thief, you must first capture their leader.
There must be restrictions on killing, and every country has its borders. As long as we can stop the enemy's invasion, is it just to kill more people?
Notes
Pull: pull.
Dang: Should.
Long: refers to a long arrow.
Capture: capture.
The first four sentences are very similar to proverbs and may be popular combat songs in the army at that time. The target of the horse is easy to shoot. If the horse falls, the person will either die or be injured, so shoot the horse first. The snake will not move without a head. If the king is captured, the thieves will scatter themselves, so capture the king first. The sentence "Capturing the King" is the main idea, and the next four sentences are extensions of this sentence.
It is also limited: it means that there is a limit and a master and slave. Exactly the meaning of the previous sentence. Shen Deqian's "Occasional Commentary on Du Shi": "In all books, the number of killings is limited, but in Wen Daizhao (Wen Zhengming), the number of killings is unlimited. It is expressed in opening and closing words, which is more interesting." Inaccurate.
Nations: Countries.
Jinjiang: border.
Self-owned territory means that there is always a boundary, so I will spare you the trouble of opening another boundary. It corresponds to the first line of the poem "If you open one side, there will be many".
Gou Neng: If you can.
Invasion: infringement.
Qi: Could it be.
The last two sentences mean that if we can resist foreign aggression, then we only need to capture the leader. How can we kill more people? Zhang Yuan's "The Collection of Du's Poems": "The economic language is spoken by the garrison soldiers." Here we can clearly see Du Fu's political views.