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Shi Jing Introduction Table of content – The Book of Odes

The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, more than three hundred songs, odes and hymns. Tr. Legge (en) and Granet (fr, incomplete).

Section IV — Odes of the temple and the Altar
1 2 3 4 5
Chapter 3 — Sacrificial odes of Zhou, decade of Min You Xiao Zi

286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296

Shijing IV. 3. (290)

They clear away the grass and the bushes ;
And the ground is laid open by their ploughs.
In thousands of pairs they remove the roots,
Some in the low wet lands, some along the dykes.
There are the master and his eldest son ;
His younger sons, and all their children ;
Their strong helpers, and their hired servants.
How the noise of their eating the viands brought to them resounds !
[The husbands] think lovingly of their wives ;
[The wives] keep close to their husbands.
[Then] with their sharp plough-shares,
They set to work on the south-lying acres.
They sow their different kinds of grain,
Each seed containing in it a germ of life.
In unbroken lines rises the blade,
And well-nourished the stalks grow long.
Luxuriant looks the young grain,
And the weeders go among it in multitudes.
Then come the reapers in crowds,
And the grain is piled up the fields,
Myriads, and hundreds of thousands, and millions [of stacks] ;
For spirits and for sweet spirits,
To offer to our ancestors, male and female,
And to provide for all ceremonies.
Fragrant is their aroma,
Enhancing the glory of the State.
Like pepper is their smell,
To give comfort to the aged.
It is not here only that there is this [abundance] ;
It is not now only that there is such a time : –
From of old it has been thus.

Legge 290

Shi Jing IV. 3. (290) IntroductionTable of content
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The Book of Odes – Shi Jing IV. 3. (290) – Chinese on/offFrançais/English
Alias Shijing, Shi Jing, Book of Odes, Book of Songs, Classic of Odes, Classic of Poetry, Livre des Odes, Canon des Poèmes.

The Book of Odes, The Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Three-characters book, The Book of Changes, The Way and its Power, 300 Tang Poems, The Art of War, Thirty-Six Strategies
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