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Return to the Garden and Fields – No. 3
— by Tao Yuanming (Jin Dynasty) I plant beans beneath the southern hill,But weeds grow thick and bean sprouts are sparse.I rise at dawn to clear the tangled waste,And carry my hoe home under the moon.The path is narrow, grasses and trees overgrow;The evening dew wets my clothes.I do not mind the wetting of…
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Returning Home
— by Tao Yuanming (Jin Dynasty) Preface: My family was poor, and farming could not support us. The children were many, and the jars had no grain. I knew no way to secure a livelihood. Relatives and friends advised me to take a minor official post. I was tempted, but had no means to…
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Drinking Wine – No. 5
— by Tao Yuanming (Jin Dynasty) I build my hut among the haunts of men,Yet hear no noise of carts and horses there.You ask me how this can be so?When the heart is distant, the place itself grows remote.I pluck chrysanthemums beneath the eastern hedge,And idly gaze at the southern hills.The mountain air is…
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Return to the Garden and Fields – No. 1
— by Tao Yuanming (Jin Dynasty) From youth I had no taste for worldly ways,My nature loved the hills and mountains.By mistake I fell into the dusty net,And for thirty years I strayed.A caged bird longs for its former woods,A pond fish yearns for its native deeps.So now I clear wild land along the…
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Tao Yuanming’s retreat was Not romanticism – It was survival
Tao Yuanming is remembered as the serene poet who “picked chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence.” But his famous resignation was far more than a gesture of moral integrity. In an age when Ji Kang was executed at forty, Ruan Ji was broken by forced collaboration, and Lu Ji’s entire clan was wiped out, official…