A Record of Putting the Little Garden in Order at the Thatched Hall草堂理小園記
城東之草堂。有上園下園。上園縱三十步。橫如之。下園。縱橫纔十許步。步則依古算田法而計之也。每夏五六月。茂草競秀。至捋人腰。而猶不使之翦之也。家有矮奴三羸僮五。見之不能無愧。以鈍鋤一事更相刮薙。纔三四步而輟。閱旬日。又理他處。則草生前所理處。蓊然菶然矣。又旬日。復理蓊然菶然者。則草又生後所理處。蓊菶然滋茂矣。如是而終不能盡去焉。此予之督役弛。而奴之用力怠故也。遂貰而不詰。乃自理下之小園。小園力足勝。故遂去怠奴。而躬自理之。剗翦椔蘙。增卑落高。使平如棋局之面焉。於是葛衣紗帽。徙倚乎其上。竹簟石枕。偃臥乎其中。林影散地。淸風自來。兒牽我衣。我撫兒項。煕熙怡怡。足以遣日。此亦閑居者之一場樂地也。嗚呼。有三十步之園。不能勝理。移於十步之地。然後僅能理焉。是豈拙者之效歟。推是而移之朝廷。顧復穢其務而不理耶。然昔陳仲擧不掃一室。其志遠也。由是言之。大丈夫之蓄意。亦豈了言哉。因自笑而私志之。志而觀之。亦往往自大笑。笑復以爲樂也。甲寅五月二十三日。記。
At the thatched hall east of the city wall there is an upper garden and a lower garden. The upper garden is thirty paces one way and as much the other; the lower garden is barely some ten paces each way. The paces are reckoned by the old manner of measuring fields.
Every year in the fifth and sixth months of summer the rank grass vies in growing tall until it comes to catch a man at the waist, and still I cannot get it cut. In the house there are three short servants and five lean serving boys, and they cannot look at it without shame. With one blunt hoe they scrape and cut by turns, and stop when they have barely gone three or four paces. Ten days pass, and when they put another place in order, the grass has come up in the place they put in order before and is rank and overgrown. Ten days more pass, and when they put the rank and overgrown part in order again, the grass comes up once more in the place they put in order afterward, ranker and more overgrown still. Going on thus, they never get rid of it all. This is because I am slack in urging the work on and the servants are idle in their efforts.
At last I let it be and did not press it, and set myself to put the little garden below in order. The little garden my strength was ample to manage, and so I sent the idle servants away and put it in order with my own hands. I mowed and cut, did away with the stumps and the shade, banked up the low places and pared down the high, and made it level as the face of a chessboard.
And now, in hempen clothes and a cap of gauze (紗帽), I walk about upon it, and with a bamboo mat and a stone pillow I lie down in the middle of it. The shadows of the grove are scattered upon the ground and a clear wind comes of itself, and when a child tugs at my coat I stroke the child's nape. It is harmonious and glad and ample for passing the day: this too is one joyful seat for a man who lives at leisure.
Ah, I had a garden of thirty paces and could not put it all in order, and only after moving to a plot of ten paces could I barely manage it: how should this not be a model of what a bungler is? If one carried this over to the court, would one not, looking at it, befoul one's charge as well and fail to put it in order? Yet of old Chen Zhongju (陳仲擧) did not sweep so much as a single room, and that was because his purpose was far off. Speaking by this, how should the heaping up of a great man's purpose be told out in words? For this I laugh at myself and write quietly. And even when I look at what I have written, I still from time to time laugh greatly at myself. I laugh and make a joy of it again. Written on the twenty-third day of the fifth month of the year gabin.