The Léang Sze

With sharp and well-shaped glittering share,
The toilers turn, with patient care,
The southern acres to prepare.

The different kinds of grain they sow.
Each seed, though hid the earth below,
Its form of life will quickly show.

Behold their wives and children there !
These the cooked millet to them bear,
Carried in baskets round and square.

In light splint hats their hoes they speed,
Clearing the ground for fruitful seed,
And rooting out the noisome weed.

The weeds, uprooted, die away,
And feed the ground by their decay.
The millets grow from day to day.

And now the golden stalks and tall
Before the reapers, rustling, fall.
Straightway they’re built up like a wall,

High as a wall the sheaves are placed,
Like comb-teeth close, and interlaced.
Anon the grain is stored in haste.

Hundreds of houses hold the store;
The wives and children fret no more ;
The labours of the year are o’er.

This black-lipped tawny bull we slay,
Whose horns the well-known curve display,
The rites of husbandry to pay.

Thus to the future hand we down
These rites long held in high renown,
Glad the ancestral ways to own.