From
陆游《
示儿》(Lu You, To My Sons, 1210, Southern Song — written days before his death at 85):
死去元知万事空，
但悲不见九州同。
王师北定中原日，
家祭无忘告乃翁 (Dying, I always knew that all things become empty — yet grieve that I have not seen the Nine Provinces reunited. On the day the royal army pacifies the Central Plain in the north, at the family sacrifice do not forget to tell your old father). Lu You spent his life calling for the reconquest of the north (lost to the Jin in 1127); the poem is his final testament. He died without seeing reunification — as it happened, the north was never recovered.
