兵车行 by 杜甫

车辚辚，马萧萧，行人弓箭各在腰。 耶娘妻子走相送，尘埃不见咸阳桥。 牵衣顿足拦道哭，哭声直上干云霄。 道傍过者问行人，行人但云点行频。 或从十五北防河，便至四十西营田。 去时里正与裹头，归来头白还戍边。 边庭流血成海水，武皇开边意未已。 君不闻汉家山东二百州，千村万落生荆杞。 纵有健妇把锄犁，禾生陇亩无东西。 况复秦兵耐苦战，被驱不异犬与鸡。 长者虽有问，役夫敢申恨？ 且如今年冬，未休关西卒。 县官急索租，租税从何出？ 信知生男恶，反是生女好。 生女犹得嫁比邻，生男埋没随百草。 君不见，青海头，古来白骨无人收。 新鬼烦冤旧鬼哭，天阴雨湿声啾啾！

The March of the Chariots (literal translation of Du Fu’s poem)

The chariots rumbled, the horses neighed, and the pedestrians had bows and arrows on their waists. Mothers and wives walked to see them off, but the dust made the Xianyang Bridge invisible. He stopped on the road and cried, pulling his clothes and stamping his feet, his cries went straight up to the sky. Passers-by on the road asked the pedestrians, but they only said that they were traveling frequently. Some people defended the river in the north at the age of fifteen, and some went to the west to farm at the age of forty. When they left, the village head wrapped their heads, and when they returned, they returned to the border with white hair. The blood on the border turned into sea water, and Emperor Wu was still determined to open up the border. Have you not heard that in the two hundred states of Shandong in the Han Dynasty, thousands of villages and towns were covered with thorns and jujubes. Even if there were strong women holding hoes and plows, weeds would grow in the fields and there would be nothing left. Moreover, the Qin soldiers were able to endure the hardships of fighting, and they were driven like dogs and chickens. Even if the elders asked, how could the servants complain? Moreover, the soldiers in Guanxi were not given a break this winter. The county magistrate is eager to collect taxes, where does the tax come from? I know that having a boy is bad, but having a girl is good. If you have a girl, you can still marry her to your neighbor, but if you have a boy, he will be buried with the grass. Don’t you see, in Qinghai, no one has ever collected the bones since ancient times. New ghosts are worried about the grievances, and old ghosts are crying, and the sky is cloudy and rainy, and the sound of chirping is heard!