Frivolous, wayward young men given to lechery are often left without heirs. On birthdays and seasonal festivals, no one offers sacrificial viands in their honor.
When one reflects upon this, how can one but grieve!
As the Divine Sovereign speaks of and considers such fates, he feels deep sorrow for mankind.
Even hard‑toiling farming youths turn frivolous and flighty.
It means that in addition to scholars, young men from rural village families also acquire frivolous habits and refuse to bow to hard labor.
Disregarding filial duty to parents and respect for elders, they bore through walls and climb over fences.
“Disregarding” means to give no thought. Parents are one’s father and mother; elders are senior kin. To bore through walls is to pierce openings to spy on neighboring women. To climb over fences means to surmount. Some even scale walls to defile other men’s wives. Frivolous youths cast off filial piety and fraternal respect, and take to adulterous, thieving and lewd acts.
Farmlands of southern plots and eastern suburbs have turned into parched wastelands.
Southern fields refer to farmlands in the south; eastern suburbs denote lands to the east. To turn means to transform things. Parchedness means grain shoots wither and die. Crops everywhere, left without weeding or manuring, wither and perish even if they once flourished.
Now they linger long in Qin towers and Chu mansions, oblivious to the passage of seasons.