Huang Chao

Stay in Qiu Lai on September 8th, and all flowers will kill me when I bloom.

The fragrant array permeates Chang 'an, and the whole city is covered with golden flowers.

[ Notes]:

[1] September 8th: In ancient times, September 9th was the Double Ninth Festival, and there was a custom of climbing mountains and enjoying chrysanthemums. Say "September 8" to rhyme. [2] Kill: wither. [3] Incense array: bursts of fragrance. [4] Golden armor: golden armor, which refers to the color of chrysanthemum.

The following explanation of poems is taken from the Dictionary of Appreciation of Tang Poetry

Since ancient times, China has had the custom of enjoying chrysanthemums on the Double Ninth Festival (September 9), which has become the Chrysanthemum Festival invisibly. This chrysanthemum poem, in fact, is not a pan-chanting chrysanthemum, but a celebration of the Chrysanthemum Festival. Why not say "September 8" instead of "September 9"? Is for the sake of Ye Yun with the words "kill" and "A" at the back. A word "waiting" is a passionate expectation and a warm yearning. What will it be like to "stay" until that day? The author answered the above sentence with a strange sentence-"I will kill a hundred flowers after I bloom". It is a natural law and a natural phenomenon that people are used to when chrysanthemums bloom. Here, the "opening" of chrysanthemums and the "killing" (withering) of flowers are juxtaposed to form a sharp contrast to show the inevitable connection between them. The author affectionately calls chrysanthemum "my flower", which is obviously regarded as a symbol of the oppressed people. Then, the opposite "hundred flowers" naturally refers to the reactionary and decadent feudal ruling group. "The sky is fragrant and penetrates Chang 'an, and the city is full of golden flowers." The whole Chang 'an is full of chrysanthemums with gold armor. They give off a burst of rich fragrance, which goes straight to the sky and soaks the whole city. The strangeness of imagination, the novelty of metaphor, the grandeur of rhetoric and the magnificence of artistic conception are unprecedented. Chrysanthemum, written by feudal literati, is at most regarded as the embodiment of Jin Jie, praising its Ao Shuang character; Here, however, it is endowed with the fighting style and character of the peasant rebel soldiers, and the yellow petals are conceived as the armor of the soldiers, making it the latest and most beautiful flower of the peasant revolutionary soldiers from the flower of the gentleman. Because of this, the chrysanthemum in the author's works has changed the static beauty of being quiet and elegant in the past, showing a dynamic beauty of being bold, rough and full of fighting breath. It is neither an "isolated symbol" nor a "cluster of chrysanthemums", but the whole city of bloom, which occupies all of Qiu Guang, exudes a strong fighting fragrance, so it is described as "fragrant array". The words "Chong" and "Tou" respectively describe the prosperity and depth of its momentum, vividly showing the prospect of victory for the peasant uprising army to capture Chang 'an and dominate everything.