Two Four Seasons in Spring and Summer is a seven-character poem by Ouyang Xiu, a poet in the Song Dynasty. The poem mainly describes the situation of farmers' life in Xiaoman season, revealing the poet's envy and yearning for farmers' life.
Original text:
Two Four Seasons Music in Spring and Summer (I)
Ouyang Xiu
In February and March of the spring breeze, farmers seldom live in the fields. The new sun warms the frost pulse, and the wild water overflows to give birth to brilliance.
Singing pigeons, pecking at the house, cuckoos flying and mulberry trees falling. Bishan reflects apricot hair in the distance, and the grass warms and sleeps yellow calves.
Tian Jia is glad to know that I know Hu Bugui. I have bought Tian Qingying, and I want to go fishing in the river.
Translation:
The south wind in summer blows all kinds of weeds on the plain, and small huts can be seen deep in the vegetation. The green ears of wheat in the nearby wheat field have been gathered together, shaking their heads like children when swaying in the breeze.
The leaves on the mulberry grow fatter and fatter, enough for silkworms to eat. For farmers, they are still looking forward to the bumper harvest of that year, and they are happy to have a bumper harvest year. As for the beauty of the countryside and the beauty of the seasons, they are too busy to attend to.
In the last four sentences of the poem, the poet expressed his feelings through vicissitudes of life in the form of discussion: since I saw the secluded countryside so fascinating, I knew it was too late to retire, and I should retire when I was strong, but look now, with the passage of time, I have become old.