次韵答王巩

In your house's glorious days,

Painted halberds guarded vermilion doors.

For eighteen years within the secretariat's maze,

Your clarity shone bright as the noon sun pours.

Your likeness hangs in the Cloud Pavilion high,

Your deeds are chronicled where covenants lie.

Three locust trees stand in the central court, a sign,

Their legacy witnessed by a hundred generations' line.

Your descendants, all heroes, brave and keen,

Unlike the world's poor and desolate scene.

Why then have you long suffered hardship's plight,

Submitting meekly to insult and slight?

Journeying between the two capitals, east and west,

Hastening about, finding no place to rest.

I wish to cast off official sash and band,

Return to tend the fields, to work the land.

The shoots of fine grain, roots not yet torn,

Endure awhile, awaiting the sweet rain's morn.

But to shake my robes and flee to eastern fields outright—

This saying of yours I cannot invite.

Let me but loosen my heart's restraint for now,

In pure discourse with a monk, his deer-tail held somehow.

To speak of tilling land myself is not yet right,

Knowing the fields—that was my father's light.