Book of Songs
王风·君子于役
佚名
君子于役，不知其期，曷至哉？
鸡栖于埘，日之夕矣，羊牛下来。
君子于役，如之何勿思！
君子于役，不日不月，曷其有佸？
鸡栖于桀，日之夕矣，羊牛下括。
君子于役，苟无饥渴！
Translation
My lord is away in service; I do not know the day of his return. When will he come home? The chickens have gone to roost, the sun is setting, and the sheep and cattle come down from the fields. He is away in service — how could I not think of him? My lord is away in service; the days and months cannot be counted. When shall we meet again? The chickens perch on the roost, the sun is again at evening, and the flocks return. He is away in service — may he at least suffer no hunger or thirst.
Analysis
Junzi Yu Yi is a poem of waiting. It does not describe war, official service, or the man’s journey in detail. Instead, it stays at home, at dusk. Chickens return to their roost, the sun goes down, and sheep and cattle come back from the fields. These images should mark the completion of the day and the return of the household. Yet the husband is absent, and precisely because everything else returns, his absence becomes sharper. The poem’s emotion is restrained. The speaker first asks when he will come home, then when they will meet again, and finally wishes only that he may not suffer hunger or thirst. That last wish is especially moving: longing has become care. The poem does not dramatize grief; it lets ordinary evening scenes reveal it. Dusk becomes the hour when domestic order exposes emotional emptiness. This quiet method is central to the Book of Songs: plain images carry deep human feeling.
About the Author
Wang Feng is one of the regional sections in the Airs of the States. It is often associated with the royal domain and with the changed atmosphere after the decline of Zhou royal power. Many Wang Feng poems carry a subdued tone of separation, service, displacement, and social unease. Junzi Yu Yi is anonymous, like most poems in the Book of Songs, and is one of the best-known early poems of a wife waiting for a husband away on duty.