己亥 is a year of the sixty-year cycle, here 1839, when
龚自珍 resigned his post and travelled home from Beijing, writing quatrains along the way. Besides the fallen petals of no. 5, the cycle is remembered for no. 125, a plea to heaven for new talent that ends
不拘一格降人才 'send down people of every kind, bound by no single pattern'.
