Immediately afterwards, he resigned and lived in seclusion. In the first year of Yixi (405), he was transferred to the Ministry of General Jianwei and Jiangzhou Governor Liu Jingxuan as Jianwei to join the army. In March, he was ordered to go to Jiankang to resign on behalf of Liu Jingxuan. After Liu Jingxuan resigned, he also resigned. In the autumn of the same year, his uncle Tao Kui introduced him to serve as the magistrate of Pengze County. Eighty-one days after he took office, he encountered a postal dispatch from Xunyang County. The official said: "We should tie up our belts to welcome him." He sighed: "How can I He bowed to the village boy for fifty buckets of rice, and then he was awarded the seal and resigned. Tao Yuanming's thirteen years of official life ended when he resigned as magistrate of Pengze County. These thirteen years were the thirteen years in which he kept trying, being disappointed, and finally despairing to realize his ideal ambition of "helping the common people". Finally, the poem "Come Back and Come Back" expresses the determination to break with the upper ruling class and not to collude with the secular world. Tao Yuanming resigned and returned home, living a life of "self-financing". His wife, Mr. Zhai, shared the same ideals with him. She lived in poverty and contentment. "The husband plowed in front and the wife hoeed in the back." The mother-in-law worked together to maintain life. She was getting closer and closer to the working people. When I returned to the fields, my life was pretty good. "The square house is more than ten acres, with eight or nine thatched houses, the back eaves are shaded by elms and willows, and the front of the hall is full of peaches and plums." Yuanming loved chrysanthemums, and they were planted all around the house. "Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, leisurely seeing the Nanshan Mountain" ("Cong Za Shi") is still popular today. He is addicted to alcohol and will get drunk after drinking. When a friend comes to visit, no matter how high or low he is, as long as there is wine at home, he will drink with him. He got drunk first. He said to the guest: "I'm drunk and want to sleep, please go." In the fourth year of Yixi's reign, his residence in Shangjing (the foothills of Yujing Mountain in the west city of Xingzi County today) caught fire, so he moved to Lili (today's Lilitao Village of Xingzi Hot Spring), and his life was more difficult. . If there is a good harvest, you can also "have a great time drinking spring wine and picking vegetables from my garden." If there is a calamity year, "you will be hungry in the summer and sleep in bed in the cold nights". In the last years of Yixi's reign, an old farmer knocked on the door early in the morning, brought wine to drink with him, and persuaded him to become an official: "Under the tattered eaves, there is not enough room for a high place. Everyone in this life is still the same (no distinction between right and wrong), I hope you will stir up the mud (referring to the mud) He replied: "I deeply feel that my father's temperament is not good enough. It is true that the bridle can be learned, but it is not a delusion. If you like this drink, I can't go back." "Drinking") declined the old farmer's advice in a "harmony but different" tone. In his later years, his life became increasingly poor, and some friends took the initiative to send money to help him. Sometimes, he would come to ask for a loan. His old friend Yan Yanzhi was appointed as the prefect of Shi'an County in the first year of Jingping (423), the Young Emperor of the Liu Song Dynasty. He passed by Xunyang and went to his house to drink every day. Before leaving, he left 20,000 yuan, all of which he sent to the restaurant and drank one after another. However, he has principles when asking for loans or accepting alms. In the first year of Yuanjia (424) of Emperor Wen of the Song Dynasty, Tan Daoji, the governor of Jiangzhou, personally visited his home. At this time, he was sick and hungry for several days and could not get out of bed. Tan Daoji advised him: "When a sage is alive, if there is no way in the world, he will hide, and if there is a way, he will come. Today, you (you) are born in a civilized world, why do you suffer like this?" He said: "How dare you look for the virtuous when you are latent? You have no ambition." Tan Daoji offered beam meat, but he waved it away. He resigned from office and returned to his hometown for twenty-two years, living a poor pastoral life, and his determination to remain poor and uphold integrity became stronger with age. In mid-September of the fourth year of Yuanjia (427), when he was still conscious, he wrote three "elegy poems" for himself. In the last two sentences of the third poem, he said: "What is the way to die? The body is supported by the same mountain." ", showing that he views death so plainly and naturally.
Tao Yuanming was the most outstanding poet in the 800 years of Han, Wei, Southern and Northern Dynasties. There are 125 Tao poems in existence today, most of which are five-character poems. In terms of content, it can be divided into three categories: drinking poems, chanting poems and pastoral poems.