Southern Song Dynasty
Fan Chengda
Plums are golden and apricots are fat,
Wheat flowers are snowy and vegetables are scarce.
No one passes through the hedges in the long day,
only dragonflies and nymphs fly.
[Notes]
1Fat: the flesh of the fruit is fat.
2 Plum: the fruit of the plum tree, ripe in summer and edible.
3 wheat flowers: buckwheat flowers. Buckwheat is a grain crop that can be sown in spring and fall, with a short growing season. The flowers are white or light red, and the fruits are ground into flour for consumption.
4 Hedges: Hedges. A covering made of bamboo or branches.
5 nymphalid (jiá) butterfly: a butterfly.
6 cauliflower: rape flower.
7惟有: only.
8 None: without.
[Today's translation]
The plums became golden, and the apricots grew bigger and bigger;
The buckwheat blossoms were snow-white, and the canola blossoms looked sparse.
The days were long, and the farmers were so busy working in the fields that they did not return home at noon, and no one walked in front of the gate;
only dragonflies and butterflies flitted around the fence.
[Appreciation]
This poem is about the idyllic scenery of Jiangnan in early summer. The poem uses plum yellow, apricot fat, wheat flower white, vegetable flower sparse, wrote the characteristics of the summer southern rural scenery, flowers and fruits, color and shape. In the third line of the poem, the situation of farmers' labor is written from the side: in the early summer, farmers are busy with farming, and they leave early and return late, so they seldom see pedestrians during the day. The last line of the poem to "only dragonflies nymphs fly" to set off the silence of the village, quiet in the movement, seem more quiet.
[Sentence] 1~2: Plum yellow and apricot fat, wheat and cabbage sparse, colorful.
3~4 sentences: the day is long and people are scarce, flies and butterflies are dancing.
[Edit Paragraph](1)
Day out to work the fields and night out to perform hemp,
Village children are each in charge.
The children and grandchildren are not yet ready for plowing and weaving,
and they also learn to plant melons in the shade of the mulberry tree.
[Edit Paragraph]Rhyme of Poetry
The 60 songs of "Miscellaneous Happenings in the Fields in Four Seasons"
are like a long scroll of rural life. The present piece is one of them, which is about the life scene of a summer village: men plowing and women weaving, working day and night, though hard, but also enjoyable. The best part is the last two lines. Imitation is the nature of children, and the games of rural children are mostly imitation of the labor of adults. The word "learn" reveals the child's innocence and liveliness. There is no image of an old man in the poem, but he calls the farmers and farmers' wives "children" and the children "children and grandchildren", which is clearly the tone of an old farmer, and is a picture of the rural family affairs in the eyes of an old grandfather. Here there is a realistic component, but also contains the poet's ideal of idyllic life. The language is plain and simple, the writing is fresh and light, so that people can see the feelings by the scene, giving people a very beautiful artistic enjoyment.