The Tian family has less leisure in the month, and people are twice as busy in May. In the evening, the south wind rises and the wheat turns yellow.
Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, accompanied by pot pulp, went with the battlefield, and Ding Zhuang was in Nangang.
It is full of rustic heat, burning the back and burning the sun, not knowing the heat, cherishing the long summer.
There was a poor woman with her son by her side, an ear in her right hand and a basket hanging from her left arm.
Listening to his words of concern is very sad. My family's taxes are gone, so I can take this to satisfy my hunger.
What are my advantages today? I have never been involved in farming and mulberry. There are three hundred stones in the land, and there is surplus food at the age of eight.
I am ashamed to read this in private, and I can't forget it every day.
Translation:
Farmers are not idle all the year round, and they are busier in May.
At night, a warm south wind blew, and the wheat in the field was ridged, ripe and golden.
Women carry food in baskets, and children carry jars full of water.
Accompany them to deliver meals in the fields, and men work in Nanshan.
The feet were smoked by the heat on the ground, and the back was baked by the hot sun.
I'm exhausted but I don't feel hot, just cherish the long summer.
I saw a poor peasant woman, holding her child and following others.
He held the picked ears of wheat in his right hand and hung a broken basket in his left arm.
She went back to tell her family story, and everyone who heard it felt sorry for her.
In order to pay taxes, we have to sell all the land and eat by picking wheat.
And what achievements have I made now? I have never planted fields or picked mulberry.
There is a salary of 300 stones a year, and there is surplus grain at the end of the year.
I am ashamed to think of these things, and I will never forget them day and night.
When Bai Juyi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, was a county commandant in zhouzhi county, he felt that the local people were very hard and lived in poverty. His works criticized the exorbitant taxes and levies that caused the people's poverty at that time, and he felt deeply guilty about his incompetence and being able to eat and drink without labor, showing the humanitarian spirit of a conscientious feudal official. This poem was written in the second year of Yuanhe in Tang Xianzong (807), when the poet was thirty-six years old. Zhouzhi county is located in the west of Xi City, Shaanxi Province. The county commandant is responsible for catching thieves and collecting taxes in the county. It is precisely because Bai Juyi is in charge of this matter that he knows best the disasters suffered by the working people in this regard. The poet was very ashamed to think that he was not diligent but had enough to eat. So I spoke frankly and expressed my deep sympathy for the working people.
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The poem "Poems of Tang and Song Dynasties" compiled by Emperor Gaozong of the Qing Dynasty: "I don't know how hot it is when I am tired" just illustrates it from the side. Exploring the compassion of "poor woman" again, Nie's poems cannot be copied.
Notes on Selected Poems of Bai Juyi by Gong and Peng Chongguang: This is Bai Juyi's earliest poem reflecting the sufferings of farmers. This poem truly and vividly describes the hard life and miserable life of farmers, and compares it with them, thus showing the author's deep sympathy for farmers and opposition to cruel economic exploitation.