on your private fields[1], All over the thirty li[2]. Attend to your
ploughing, With your ten thousand men all in pairs.


ODE 3. THE KAU LU.


CELEBRATING THE REPRESENTATIVES OF FORMER DYNASTIES, WHO HAD
COME TO COURT TO ASSIST AT A SACRIFICE IN THE ANCESTRAL TEMPLE.

This piece may have been used when the king was dismissing his
distinguished guests in the ancestral temple. See the introductory note
to this Part, pp. 300, 301.

A flock of egrets is flying, About the marsh there in the west[3]. My
visitors came, With an (elegant) carriage like those birds.

There, (in their states), not disliked, Here, (in Kau), never tired
of;-They are sure, day and night, To perpetuate their fame.

[1. The mention of 'the private fields' implies that there were also
'the public fields,' cultivated by the husbandmen in common, in behalf
of the government. As the people are elsewhere introduced, wishing that
the rain might first fall on 'the public fields,' to show their loyalty,
so the king here mentions only 'the private fields,' to show his
sympathy and consideration for the people.

2. For the cultivation of the ground, the allotments of single families
were separated by a small ditch; ten allotments, by a larger; a hundred,
by what we may call a brook; a thousand, by a small stream; and ten