歸園田居五首(其一) 陶淵明

歸園田居五首(其一)      陶淵明 (365-427)

少無適俗韻，性本愛丘山。誤落塵網中，一去三十年。
羈鳥戀舊林，池魚思故淵。開荒南野際，守拙歸園田。
方宅十余畝，草屋八九間。榆柳蔭後檐，桃李羅堂前。
曖曖遠人村，依依墟裡煙。狗吠深巷中，雞鳴桑樹巔。
戶庭無塵雜，虛室有余閑。久在樊籠裡，復得返自然。


Retreating to a rustic life (Poem No. 1)     Tao Yuanming(365-427)

Never had I a worldly disposition,
Born with an innate love for landscapes and mountains,
Unwittingly I have fallen into the earthly trap,
For thirty years there I’ve been strapped;
A caged bird misses its home forest,
A pond fish hankers for the deep waters where it once rested;
I open up barren lands in the wild south territories,
In these farms I can guard my innate simplicity;
On a dozen or so acres of land houses are put up,
Together with eight or nine huts,
Behind the houses elms and willows are grown,
In the front peaches and plums bloom;
Neighboring hamlets can only be seen amidst the misty end,
Cooking smokes hang over where the houses stand,
Dogs bark in deep alleys,
Roosters crow on top of mulberries;
Nothing unbecoming and undesirable is seen in my household enclosure,
In my spacious bowers, there is only abundant leisurely pleasure,
After being long entrapped in the earthly cage,
I’ve at last come back into the bosom of Great Nature.