What does Cao Cao's short song mean?

"Short Songs" is an old song in Han Dynasty (made by Shu Yue in Song Dynasty), which belongs to Yuefu poetry anthology "Xiang He Ge Ci Ping Diao Qu", and the ancient ci has been lost. Yue Fuming believes that short songs are relative to Long song, and "Long song" and "short songs" are based on the length of songs. There are two short songs and Yuefu poems by Cao Cao, and this is the first one. At the beginning of the poem, he expressed his deep feelings about the failure of time; Then, he expressed his desire by describing the lack of talents and banquets. Finally, he expressed his grand ideal of recruiting talented people to complete the great cause of reunification with Zhou Gong's allusions. The whole poem uses allusions and idioms to express its mind, such as the Book of Songs as a sentence and the semantics in Guanzi and Han Shichuan, all of which are just right and integrated. Vivid metaphors, such as "morning dew" for perishable life, "bright moon" for Goldman's virtue, and mountains and seas for being broad-minded, the more talents you recruit, the better, are all concrete and appropriate. His poems inherited the tradition of Han Yuefu, which not only reflected the reality, but also had deep feelings. The language is simple and natural, and there are impassioned positive emotions in the deep melancholy, as Zhong Rong said in his poem: "Cao Gong is ancient and straight, and there are quite sad sentences."

Short Songs is a highly political poem, which mainly serves Cao Cao's political line and policies at that time. However, the author completely melted the political content and significance in the rich lyrical artistic conception, and the whole poem gave full play to the specialty of poetry creation, using metaphor accurately and skillfully, and bringing emotion with emotion. Poetry has made great achievements in ideological content and art, with simple language, far-reaching conception and abundant momentum. This "short song" with the characteristics of the Jian 'an era is deeply moved after reading it.