| 英譯： |
Wagons rumble; horses utter long, loud cries;
Soldiers carry bows and arrows on their sides.
Fathers, mothers, wives and children rush to see them off;
Rising dust hides Xianyang Bridge from the eyes.
Pulling the soldiers' clothes and stamping,
they block the way in tears:
Their wailing shoots into and rends the skies.
A passer-by asks a soldier whose reply is plain,
"Conscription comes again and again."
"At fifteen some were posted north to guard the River,
By forty to till the land west we went.
When we left home, village seniors bound our heads;
When we returned white-haired ─ to the border we'd be sent.
At the border, a sea of blood would flow,
Yet his grip on border territories
the Wu Emperor won't let go.
Haven't you heard,
In the two hundred comities east of Hua Mount,
How thorns and thistles in thousands of villages overgrow?
Even where strong women can plough and hoe,
Crops in the fields in utter disorder grow.
Worse still, the hard-fighting Qin soldiers
Are driven like dogs and chickens to and fro."
"Even though sir, more you want to know,
As conscripts, resentment dare we show?
Just look at the West Pass this winter:
Relief for the soldiers wasn't given consent.
For rent die county officials press hard:
But with what do we pay the tax and rent?
We well know having boys is bad,
But having girls is good.
Boys are doomed to lie buried under wild grasses,
But girls can get married in the neighbourhood."
Don't you see,
By the shores of Qing Hai,
The uncollected white bones from of old still lie?
New ghosts grumble, old ghosts sob:
On gloomy, rainy days
one would hear them bitterly cry.
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