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Compassionate Heaven is arrayed in angry terrors; |
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Heaven is indeed sending down ruin, |
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Afflicting us with famine, |
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So that the people are all wandering fugitives; -- |
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In the settled regions and on the borders all is desolation. |
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Heaven sends down its net of crime; -- |
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Devouring insects, who weary and confuse men's minds, |
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Ignorant, oppressive, neglient, |
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Breeders of confusion, utterly perverse: -- |
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These are the men employed to tranquilize our country. |
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Insolent and slanderous, -- |
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[The king] does not know a flaw in them. |
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We, careful and feeling in peril, |
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For long in unrest, |
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Are constantly subjected to degradation. |
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As in a year of drought, |
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The grass not attaining to luxuriance; |
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As water plants attached to a tree; |
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So do I see in this country, |
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All going to confusion. |
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The wealth of former days,, |
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Was not like our present condition. |
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The distress of the present, |
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Did not previously reach this degree. |
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Those are [like] coarse rice, these are [like] fine; -- |
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Why do you not retire of yourselves, |
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But prolong my anxious sorrow? |
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A pool becomes dry, -- |
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Is it not because no water comes to it from its banks? |
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A spring becomes dry, -- |
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Is it not because no water rises in it from itself? |
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Great is the injury [all about]. |
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So that my anxious sorrow is increased. |
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Will not calamity light on my person? |
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Formerly when the former kings received their appointment, |
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There were such ministers as the duke of Zhou, |
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Who would in a day enlarge the kingdom a hundred Li; |
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Now it is contracted in a day a hundred Li. |
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Oh! Alas! |
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Among the men of the present day, |
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Are there not still some with the old virtue? |
Published
by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003
by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia