— 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…
— 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…
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…