参考翻译
The Book of Songs is the earliest collection of poems in China. It contains 305 poems created over a period of some 500 years from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period. At first,The Book of Songs was known as Poems or Three Hundred Poems. Confucius used it as a textbook for teaching his disciples.After the Han Dynasty, it became known officially as the Book of Songs. Poems in the book are comprised of four-character verses,with concise language, refreshing rhymes and simple style. Many poems in it truthfully reflect the life and society of that time. A large number are about love and marriage.The ideological and artistic achievements of the Book of Songs had great influence on the development of poetry of later generations.