Du Fu's anti-war classic

The Ballad of the Army Carts
Du Fu

Squeals from war horses, rumbling carts,
With quivers and bows at their waists, the men march,
As parents and children and wives say farewells,
The churning dust hides Xianyang Bridge's great arch.
They cling and they kick and they clutch and they wail,
Cloud-piercing wails as each loved one departs.

A traveller questions one man marching by, 
"The draft never stops," is his only reply.
"At fifteen they station us north on the river,
At forty out west on the farms for supply.
We leave when the elders still help tie our turbans,
Come back with hair white, then return to the line.

Out in the borders the blood's like a sea.
'Keep going!' the Emperor Wu has decreed.
Haven't you heard? 
In the eastern Han Empire, all two hundred counties, 
There's thorns now on thousands of farms gone to seed.
The women are strong, they work hoes and their ploughs,
But millet's grown wild and has swamped the farm bounds.
It's us from the west bear the brunt of the fighting,
Herded no better than gamecocks or hounds.

Ask me, sir? Of course you may.
But it's not my place to say. 
Even though... us western troops 
Got no winter break to plant.
Now district lords come wanting rent
How can bare farms pay? They can't.
A boy was once a happy birth,
Now girls are blessings, sons a curse.
A daughter could possibly marry a neighbour,
But sons all too soon join the weeds in the earth.

Haven't you seen? By Lake Qinghai's cold stones,
Ancient, unburied, the piles of white bones?
Fresh souls still rage there, the old ghosts just weep.
And the sodden grey sky moans and moans and moans."

杜甫 兵车行
车辚辚，马萧萧，行人弓箭各在腰。
耶娘妻子走相送，尘埃不见咸阳桥。
牵衣顿足拦道哭，哭声直上干云霄。
道旁过者问行人，行人但云点行频。
或从十五北防河，便至四十西营田。
去时里正与裹头，归来头白还戍边。
边庭流血成海水，武皇开边意未已。
君不闻，汉家山东二百州，千村万落生荆杞？
纵有健妇把锄犁，禾生陇亩无东西。
况复秦兵耐苦战，被驱不异犬与鸡。
长者虽有问，役夫敢申恨。
且如今年冬，未休关西卒。
县官急索租，租税从何出？
信知生男恶，反是生女好。
生女犹得嫁比邻，生男埋没随百草。
君不见，青海头，古来白骨无人收？
新鬼烦冤旧鬼哭，天阴雨湿声啾啾。

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Xianyang bridge no longer exists, but was supposed to be dozens of metres long.

The Emperor Wu was the greatest emperor of the Han Dynasty (202BCE-220CE). This poem uses the convenient fiction of a complaint about Wu's wars of expansion to protest the long wars being waged during Du Fu's lifetime.

Lake Qinghai is a very large, cold lake on the Tibetan plateau.

This poem needs no commentary. But consider this question: it is titled a ballad, with the implication being that it was set to music. I don’t know if you can imagine any music operatic or sad enough to accompany these lines; if you can, leave a suggestion.