The typical poems of admonition during the Spring and Autumn period mainly included the following eight ones, five of which are from The Book of Songs: The Mountain Gales in Songs of Bei, My Man in Songs of Wei, The Cock Has Crowed in Songs of Qi, Mount Zhongnan in Songs of Qin and Yi in Major Odes, together with Xia Yu Song and two poems of Prayers outside The Book of Songs. Concerning the targets of admonition, there were differences between admonition for others and for oneself; concerning the content of admonition, the focus was on the “morality” of the aristocrats of different social strata, such as emperors, princes, ministers, senior officials, the scholars, etc. This is because “morality” had a direct bearing on national survival and personal fortunes. Since the early Western Zhou Dynasty, the concept of “morality” gradually had transferred from “heaven morality” to “human morality”, and the rising “respect for morality” became the ideological basis and motive of the poems of admonition. As a result, “teaching” and “selfrestraint”, as the fundamental approaches to the realization of “respect for morality”, had a direct influence on the motivation of poems of admonition for others and for oneself respectively.
