“The hills and rivers of the lowland country
You have made your battle ground.
How do you suppose the people who live there
Will procure firewood and hay?
Do not let me hear you talking together
About titles and promotions;
For a single general’s reputation
Is made out of ten thousand corpses.”

—  Ts'ao Sung

As translated by Arthur Waley in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1918)
Variant translations:
Rich hills and fields that war despoiled.
Their people how could they live?
Sing me no more of epics—some Man gained
Eternal fame on skeletons.
Shi ci yi xuan: Poems from China (1950), p. 35
A Protest in the Sixth Year of Qianfu (A.D. 879)

Original

泽国江山入战图, 生民何计乐樵苏; 凭君莫话封侯事, 一将功成万骨枯。

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ts'ao Sung 2
830–901

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