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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=531645" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ballad of the Army Carts</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The carts squeak and trundle, the horses whinny, the conscripts go by, each<br>with a bow and arrows at his waist. Their fathers, mothers, wives, and children<br>run along beside them to see them off. The Hsien-yang Bridge cannot be seen for<br>dust. They pluck at the men's clothes, stamp their feet, or stand in the way<br>weeping. The sound of their weeping seems to mount up to the blue sky above. A<br>passer-by questions the conscripts, and the conscripts reply:<br> ``They're always mobilizing now! There are some of us who went north at<br>fifteen to garrison the River and who are still, at forty, being sent to the<br>Military Settlements in the west. When we left as lads, the village headman had<br>to tie our head-cloths for us. We came back white-haired, but still we have to<br>go back for frontier duty! On those frontier posts enough blood has flowed to<br>fill the sea; but the Martial Emperor's dreams of expansion remain unsatisfied.<br>Haven't you heard, sir, in our land of Han, throughout the two hundred<br>prefectures east of the mountains briers and brambles are growing in thousands<br>of little hamlets; and though many a sturdy wife turns her own hand at the<br>hoeing and ploughing, the crops grow just anywhere, and you can't see where one<br>field ends and the next begins? And it's even worse for the men from Ch'in.<br>Because they make such good fighters, they are driven about this way and that<br>like so many dogs or chickens.<br> ``Though you are good enough to ask us, sir, it's not for the likes of<br>us to complain. But take this winter, now. The Kuan-hsi troops are not being<br>demobilized. The District Officers press for the land-tax, but where is it to<br>come from? I really believe it's a misfortune to have sons. It's actually<br>better to have a daughter. If you have a daughter, you can at least marry her<br>off to one of the neighbors; but a son is born only to end up lying in the<br>grass somewhere, dead and unburied. Why look, sir, on the shores of the Kokonor<br>the bleached bones have lain for many a long year, but no one has ever gathered<br>them up. The new ghosts complain and the old ghosts weep, and under the grey<br>and dripping sky the air is full of their baleful twitterings.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Tu+Fu">Tu Fu</a><div class=q>
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with a bow and arrows at his waist. Their fathers, mothers, wives, and children
run along beside them to see them off. The Hsien-yang Bridge cannot be seen for
dust. They ..."></div>
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