Young people work hard all their lives, but they should not waste time and effort - Du Xunhe, Tang Dynasty, "Inscribed on My Brother and Nephew's School"
[Interpretation] The original poem is a seven-rhyme poem. These two sentences are a warning to my brother and nephew - studying hard in his youth will lay the foundation for a lifelong career. Don't be lazy at all and don't waste your good time. The poem is an exhortation to future generations, with sincere sentiment and profound intention.
Du Xunhe (846-907), whose courtesy name was Yanzhi and who called himself "Jiuhuashan native", was a native of Shidai (now Shitai County) in the late Tang Dynasty.
When Du was young, he dropped out of school due to his poor family and went to the Xiulin Peak of Jiuhua Mountain, where he stayed in a monk's house and studied hard in the mountains. He called himself "the poorest scholar in the world". In his youth, he failed in repeated exams. It was not until the second year of Dashun (891) when he was forty-six years old that he became a Jinshi (eighth place). At that time, the political situation was in turmoil. He did not take up an official position and returned to his hometown to live idle. Later he entered the Southern Tang Dynasty and was awarded the title of Hanlin bachelor. After knowing Zhigao, he died of illness soon after.
Xun He was talented and had a bumpy career, but he never fulfilled his ambition. However, he enjoyed a high reputation in the poetry world, became his own family, and was good at palace poetry. Because he has been in the embrace of Jiuhua Mountain for a long time, there are many poems about the appearance of Jiuhua Mountain, which have a distinctive color of the times. "Missing My Former Residence in Jiuhua in Autumn", written while living in a foreign country, reveals the mood of abandoning the official position and returning to Jiuhua as a hermit and the pain of being in a long-distance relationship. Poems such as "Reflections on Returning to Jiuhua from Jiangxi", "The Cottage I Live in" and "The Widow in the Mountains" reveal the gloomy social politics, cruel officials, warlords fighting, and the people's desperation. They reflect the people's sufferings and voices and are the key to the society at that time. A true portrayal of life.
Du Xunhe is a famous realist poet in the late Tang Dynasty. He advocated that poetry should inherit the tradition of elegance and oppose glitz. His poems are simple and natural, simple and clear, fresh and elegant. He is the author of "Collection of Tang Feng" (ten volumes), three of which are included in "Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty".