Lu You 陸游
poet · Song China · 1125–1210
A poet of the Southern Song who left more than nine thousand poems. All his life he argued for winning back the lost northern lands, and he kept cats.
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1180s
I wrapped up salt to pay for a little cat and brought it home. It guards every one of the ten thousand books in my mountain study. I am ashamed that my house is poor and its reward so thin: no rug to sit on in the cold, no fish with its food.
裹鹽迎得小貍奴，盡護山房萬卷書。
慚愧家貧策勲薄，寒無氊坐食無魚。"For My Cat," in the Complete Song Poems
November 4, 1192
The wind rolls up the rivers and lakes and rain darkens the village. The hills on every side sound like sea waves turning over. The brushwood fire is gentle and the rough rug is warm. My cat and I are not going out.
風卷江湖雨闇村，四山聲作海濤翻。
溪柴火輭蠻氊暖，我與狸奴不出門。"The Fourth Day of the Eleventh Month: Great Wind and Rain," the first poem, in the Complete Song Poems
1199
What comes from paper is in the end too shallow. Know this for certain: the thing has to be done yourself.
紙上得來終覺淺，絕知此事要躬行。"Reading on a Winter Night, to Show My Son Ziyu," in the Complete Song Poems
1210 · At eighty-five, the last poem he wrote before he died
I have always known that once I am dead all things are empty. My only grief is not to have seen the land made one. On the day the king's armies take back the Central Plain in the north, do not forget, at the family sacrifice, to tell your father.
死去元知萬事空，但悲不見九州同。
王師北定中原日，家祭無忘告乃翁。"To Show My Sons," in the Complete Song Poems
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