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My body would have died and my soul hovered by the bones that no one gathered.
A ghost, I'd have wandered in Yün-nan, always looking for home.
Over the graves of ten thousand soldiers, mournfully hovering."
So the old man spoke,
And I bid you listen to his words
Have you not heard
That the Prime Minister of K'ai-yüan,[1] Sung K'ai-fu,
Did not reward frontier exploits, lest a spirit of aggression should prevail?
And have you not heard
That the Prime Minster of T'ien-Pao, Yang Kuo-chung[2]
Desiring to win imperial favour, started a frontier war?
But long before he could win the war, people had lost their temper;
Ask the man with the broken arm in the village of Hsin-fēng!
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