THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 CARROLL ALCOTT 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 CARROLL ALCOTT MEMORIAL 
 LIBRARY FUND COMMITTEE
 
 xrbe Mist)om ot tbe iBast Secies 
 
 Edited by 
 
 L. CRANMER-BYNG 
 
 Dr. S. A. KAPADIA 
 
 A LUTE OF JADE
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR HERBERT GILES
 
 WISDOM OF THE EAST 
 
 A LUTE OF JADE 
 
 BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE 
 CLASSICAL POETS OF CHINA 
 
 RENDERED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY L. CRANMER-BYNG 
 
 AUTHOR or "THE ODES OF CONFUCIUS*' 
 
 ^'itb lutes of gold and lutes of jade 
 
 LiPo 
 
 ^i.'i 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 1915
 
 Pnnttd hy Hoiell, Watson <t Viney, Ld., London and AyUAury, SngUmi.
 
 3i77 
 
 
 C8S 
 
 ^'5 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 The Ancient Ballads . 
 
 Poetry before the T'angs 
 
 The Poets of the T'ang Dynasty 
 
 A Poet's Emperor 
 
 Chinese Verse Form 
 
 The Influence of Religion on 
 
 Thb Odes of Confucius 
 
 Exile 
 
 Ch'U Yuan . 
 
 The Land of 
 
 Wang Sbng-ju 
 
 Ch'en TzC-ang 
 
 Sung Chih-wen 
 
 Kao-Shih . 
 
 Impressions of a Traveller 
 Desolation 
 
 Mjsng Hao-jan 
 The Lost One 
 A Friend Expected 
 
 Ch'ang Ch'ien . 
 
 A Night on the Mountain 
 
 Chinese Poetry 
 
 9 
 9 
 12 
 U 
 18 
 22 
 23 
 
 29 
 
 32 
 32 
 
 36 
 
 36 
 
 38 
 
 40 
 40 
 
 41 
 
 43 
 43 
 
 44 
 
 46 
 46 
 
 1495412
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 TS'BN-TS'AN. 
 
 A Dream of Spring 
 
 Tu Fu 
 
 The Little Rain . 
 A Night of Song . 
 The Recruiting Sergeant 
 Chants of Autumn 
 
 UTo 
 
 To the City of Nan-king 
 Memories with the Dusk Return 
 An Emperor's Love 
 On the Banks of Jo-yeh 
 Thoughts in a Tranquil Night 
 The Guild of Good-fellowship 
 Under the Moon . 
 Drifting . ... 
 
 Wang Ch*ang-ling 
 
 The Song of the Nenuphars 
 Tears in the Spring 
 
 Chang Chih-ho . 
 
 A World Apart . 
 
 Chang Jo-hu 
 
 T'uNG Han-ching 
 
 The Celestial Weaver 
 
 Po Cnij-i .... 
 The Lute Girl . 
 The Never-ending Wrong 
 The River and the Leaf 
 Lake Shang . 
 The Ruined Home
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 A Palace Story . 
 
 Peaceful Old Age 
 
 Sleeplessness . 
 
 The Grass . 
 
 Autumn across the Frontier 
 
 The Flower Fair . 
 
 The Penalties of Rank 
 
 The Island of Pines 
 
 Springtide . 
 
 The Ancient Wind 
 
 Li Hua . . . 
 An Old Battle-field 
 
 SstJ-K'UNG T'u . 
 
 Return of Spring. 
 The Colour of Life 
 Set Free 
 Fascination . 
 Tranquil Repose . 
 The Poet's Vision 
 Despondent . 
 Embroideries 
 Concentration 
 Motion . 
 
 OU-YANQ HSIU OF Lu-LING 
 
 Autumn 
 
 At the Graveside. 
 
 Appendix , 
 
 VAQB 
 
 92 
 92 
 93 
 94 
 94 
 95 
 96 
 97 
 97 
 98 
 
 100 
 100 
 
 103 
 105 
 105 
 106 
 106 
 107 
 108 
 108 
 109 
 109 
 110 
 
 111 
 111 
 113 
 
 115
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 THE object of the editors of this series is a 
 very definite one. They desire above all 
 things that, in their humble way, these books 
 shall be the ambcissadors of good-will and under- 
 standing between East and West, the old world 
 of Thought, and the new of Action, In this 
 endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but 
 followers of the highest example in the land. 
 They are confident that a deeper knowledge of 
 the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental 
 thought may help to a revival of that true spirit 
 of Charity which neither despises nor fears the 
 nations of another creed and colour. 
 
 L. CRANMER-BYNG. 
 S. A. KAPADIA. 
 
 nokthbrook society, 
 21, Cromwell Road, 
 London, S.W.
 
 A LUTE OF JADE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 The Ancient Ballads 
 
 A LITTLE under three hundred years, from 
 A.D. 618 to 906, the period of the T'ang 
 dynasty, and the great age of Chinese poetry had 
 come and gone. Far back in the twiUght of 
 history, at least 1,700 years before Christ, the 
 Chinese people sang their songs of kings and feudal 
 princes good or bad, of husbandry, or now and then 
 songs with the more personal note of simple joys 
 and sorrows. All things in these Odes collected 
 by Confucius belong to the surface of life ; they 
 are the work of those who easily plough light 
 furrows, knowing nothing of hidden gold. Only 
 at rare moments of exaltation or despair do we 
 hear the lyrical cry rising above the monotone 
 of dreamlike content. Even the magnificent 
 outburst at the beginning of this book, in which
 
 10 THE ANCIENT BALLADS 
 
 the unhappy woman compares her heart to a 
 dying moon, is prefaced by vague complaint : 
 
 My brothers, although they support 
 Are angry if I speak of my sadneea. 
 
 My sadness is so great, 
 Nearly all are jealous of me ; 
 Many calumnies attack me, 
 And scorning spares me not. 
 Yet what harm have I done ? 
 I can show a clear conscience. 
 
 me not. 
 
 Yes, the conscience is clear and the song is 
 clear, and so these Uttle streams flow on, shining 
 in the clear dawn of a golden past to which all 
 poets and philosophers to come will turn with 
 wistful eyes. These early ballads of the Chinese 
 differ in feeling from almost all the ballad htera- 
 ture of the world. They are ballads of peace, 
 while those of other nations are so often war- 
 songs and the remembrances of brave deeds. 
 Many of them are sung to a refrain. More 
 especially is this the case with those whose lines^ 
 breathe sadness, where the refrain comes like i 
 sigh at the end of a i^egret : 
 
 Cold from the spring the waters paaa 
 
 Over the waving pampas grass, 
 All night long in dream I lie. 
 Ah me ! ah me ! to awake and sigh 
 Sigh for the City of Chow.
 
 THE ANCIENT BALLADS 11 
 
 Cold from its source the stream meanders 
 
 Darkly down through the oleanders, 
 All night long in dream I lie, 
 Ah me ! ah me ! to awake and sigh- 
 Sigh for the City of Chow. 
 
 In another place the refrain urges and impor- 
 tunes ; it is time for flight : 
 
 Cold and keen the north wind blows. 
 Silent falls the shroud of snows. 
 You who gave me your heart, 
 Let us join hands and depart 1 
 
 Is this a time for delay t 
 
 Now, while we may. 
 
 Let us away. 
 
 Only the lonely fox is red. 
 Black but the crow-flight overhead 
 You who gave me your heart 
 The chariot creaks to depart. 
 
 Is this a time for delay 7 
 
 Now, while we may. 
 
 Let us away. 
 
 Perhaps these Odes may best be compared 
 with the little craftless figures in an early age of 
 pottery, when the fragrance of the soil yet lingered 
 about the rough clay. The maker of the song 
 was a poet, and knew it not. The maker of the 
 bowl was an artist, and knew it not. You will 
 get no finish from either the lines are often 
 blurred, the design but half fulfilled ; and yet the 
 effect is not inartistic. It has been well said
 
 12 THE ANCIENT BALLADS 
 
 tidat greatness is but another name for inter- 
 pretation ; and in so far as these nameless workmen 
 of old interpreted themselves and the times in 
 which they lived, they have attained enduring 
 greatness. 
 
 Poetry before the T'angs 
 
 Following on the Odes, we have much written 
 in the same style, more often than not by women, 
 or songs possibly written to be sung by them, 
 always in a minor key, fraught with sadness, yet 
 full of quiet resignation and pathos. 
 
 It is necessary to mention in passing the 
 celebrated Ch'ii Yiian (fourth cent. B.C.), minister 
 and kinsman of a petty kinglet under the Chou 
 dynasty, whose Li Sao, Uterally translated Falling 
 into Trouble, is partly autobiography and 
 partly imagination. His death by drowning gave 
 rise to the great Dragon-boat Festival, which 
 was originally a solemn annual search for the 
 body of the poet. 
 
 Soon a great national dynasty arrives whose 
 Emperors are often patrons of hterature and 
 occasionally poets as well. The House of Han 
 .{200 B.c.-A.D. 200) has left its mark upon the 
 Empire of China, whose people of to-day still 
 call themselves " Sons of Han." There were 
 Emperors beloved of literary men, Emperors 
 beloved of the people, builders of long waterways
 
 POETRY BEFORE THE T'ANGS 13 
 
 and glittering palaces, and one great conqueror, 
 the Emperor Wu Ti, of almost legendary fame. 
 This was an age of preparation and development 
 of new forces. Under the Hans, Buddhism first 
 began to flourish. The effect is seen in the poetry 
 of the time, especially towards the closing years 
 of this dynasty. The minds of poets sought 
 refuge in the ideal world from the illusions of the 
 senses. 
 
 The third century a.d. saw the birth of what 
 was probably the first hterary club ever known, 
 the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. This 
 Httle coterie of friends was composed of seven 
 famous men, who possessed many talents in 
 common, being poets and musicians, alchemists, 
 philosophers, and mostly hard drinkers as well. 
 Their poetry, however, is scarcely memorable. 
 Only one great name stands between them and 
 the poets of the T'ang dynasty the name of 
 T'ao Ch'ien (a.d. 365-427), whose exquisite 
 allegory " The Peach Blossom Fountain " is 
 quoted by Professor Giles in his Chinese Literature. 
 The philosophy of this ancient poet appears to 
 have been that of Horace. Carpe diem ! 
 
 " Ah, how short a time it is that we are here ! 
 Why then not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to 
 trouble whether we remain or go ? What boots 
 it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts ? 
 I want not wealth ; I want not power : heaven 
 \a beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through
 
 14 POETRY BEFORE THE T'ANGS 
 
 the bright hours as they pass, in my garden 
 among my flowers, or I will mount the hill and 
 sing my song, or weave my verse beside the 
 limpid brook. Thus will I work out my allotted 
 span, content with the appointments of Fate, 
 my spirit free from care." ' For him enjoyment 
 and scarcely happiness is the thing. And al- 
 though many of his word-pictures are not lacking 
 in charm or colour, they have but httle signifi- 
 cance beyond them. They are essentially the 
 art works of an older school than that of the 
 Seven Sages. But we must have due regard 
 for them, for they only miss greatness by a httle, 
 and remind us of the faint threnodies that stir 
 in the throats of bird musicians upon the dawn. 
 
 The Poets op the T'ang Dynasty 
 
 At last the golden age of Chinese poetry is at 
 hand. Call the roll of these three hundred 
 eventful years, and all the great masters of song 
 wiU answer you. This is an age of professional: 
 poets, whom emperors and statesmen delight to 
 honour. With the Chinese, verse-making has 
 always been a second nature. It is one of the 
 accomphshments which no man of education 
 would be found lacking. Colonel Cheng-Ki-Tong, 
 in his delightful book The Chinese Painted by 
 
 I Gilee, Chinese Literature, p. 130.
 
 THE POETS OF THE T'ANG DYNASTY 16 
 
 Themselves, says : " Poetry has been in China, 
 as in Greece, the language of the gods. It was 
 poetry that inculcated laws and maxims ; it 
 was by the harmony of its lines that traditions 
 were handed down at a time when memory had 
 to supply the place of writing ; and it was the 
 first language of wisdom and of inspiration." 
 It has been above all the recreation of statesmen 
 and great officials, a means of escape from the 
 weariness of pubhc life and the burden of ruUng. 
 A study of the interminable biographies of Chinese 
 poets and men of letters would reveal but a few 
 professional poets, men whose lives were wholly 
 devoted to their art ; and of these few the T'ang 
 dynasty can claim nearly all. Yet strange as 
 it may seem, this matters but httle when the 
 quaUty of Chinese poetry is considered. The 
 great men of the age were at once servants of 
 duty and the lords of life. To them official 
 routine and the responsibilities of the state were 
 burdens to be borne along the highway, with 
 periods of rest and intimate re-union with nature 
 to cheer the travellers. When the heavy load 
 was laid aside, song rose naturally from the hps. 
 Subtly connecting the arts, they were at once 
 painters and poets, musicians and singers. And 
 because they were philosophers and seekers after 
 the beauty that underlies the form of things, 
 they made the picture express its own significance, 
 and every song find echo in the souls of those
 
 16 THE POETS OF THE T'ANG DYNASTY 
 
 that heard. You will find no tedium of repetition 
 in all their poetry, no thin vein of thought beaten 
 out over endless pages. The following extract 
 from an ancient treatise on the art of poetry 
 called Ming-Chung sets forth most clearly certain 
 ideals to be pursued : 
 
 " To make a good poem, the subject must be 
 interesting, and treated in an attractive manner ; 
 genius must shine throughout the whole, and be 
 supported by a graceful, brilUant, and subHme 
 style. The poet ought to traverse, with a rapid 
 flight, the lofty regions of philosophy, without 
 deviating from the narrow way of truth. . . . 
 Good taste will only pardon such digressions as 
 bring him towards his end, and show it from a 
 more striking point of view. 
 
 " Disappointment must attend him, if he speaks 
 without speaking to the purpose, or without 
 describing things with that fire, with that force, 
 and with that energy which present them to the 
 mind as a painting does to the eyes. Bold 
 thought, untiring imagination, softness and har- 
 mony, make a true poem. 
 
 " One must begin with grandeur, paint every- 
 thing expressed, soften the shades of those which 
 are of least importance, collect all into one point 
 of view, and carry the reader thither with a rapid 
 flight." 
 
 Yet when due respect has been paid to this 
 critic of old time, the fact still remains that
 
 THE POETS OF THE T'ANG DYNASTY 17 
 
 concentration and suggestion are the two essen- 
 tials of Chinese poetry. There is neither IHad 
 nor Odyssey to be found in the libraries of the 
 Chinese ; indeed, a favourite feature of their 
 verse is the " stop short," a poem containing only 
 four lines, concerning which another critic has 
 explained that only the words stop, while the 
 sense goes on. But what a world of meaning is 
 to be found between four short lines ! Often a 
 door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the 
 halls of romance, where the reader may roam at 
 will. With this nation of artists in emotion, the 
 taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance ; 
 it is the aroma which remains and delights. 
 The poems of the T'angs are full of this subtle 
 aroma, this suggestive compelhng fragrance 
 which Mngers when the songs have passed away. 
 It is as though the ^oHan harps had caught 
 some strayed wind from an unknown world, and 
 brought strange messages from peopled stars. 
 
 A deep simplicity touching many hidden 
 springs, a profound regard for the noble uses of 
 leisure, things which modern critics of hfe have 
 taught us to despise these are the technique and 
 the composition and colour of all their work. 
 
 Complete surrender to a particular mood until 
 the mood itself surrenders to the artist, and after- 
 wards silent ceaseless toil until a form worthy 
 of its expression has been achieved this is the 
 method of Li Po and his fellows. And as for
 
 18 THE POETS OP THE T'ANG DYNASTY 
 
 leisure, it means life with all its possibilities of 
 beauty and romance. The artist is ever saying, 
 " Stay a Httle while ! See, I have captured one 
 moment from eternity." Yet it is only in the 
 East that poetry is truly appreciated, by those 
 to whom leisure to look around them is vital as 
 the air they breathe. This explains the welcome 
 given by Chinese Emperors and CaHphs of Bagdad 
 to all roving minstrels in whose immortaUty, hke 
 flies in amber, they are caught. 
 
 A Poet's Emperor 
 
 In the long hst of imperial patrons the name 
 of the Emperor Ming Huang of the T'ang dynasty 
 n<.)lds the foremost place. History alone would 
 ncrt; have immortahzed his memory.^ But romance 
 is nearer to this Emperor's life than history. He 
 was not a great ruler, but an artist stifled in 
 ceremony and lost in statecraft. Yet what 
 Emperor could escape immortahty who had Tu 
 Fu and Li Po for contemporaries, Ch'ang-an for 
 his capital, and T'ai Chen of a thousand songs 
 to wife ? Poet and sportsman, mystic and man 
 of this world, a great polo player, and the passion- 
 ate lover of one beautiful woman whose ill- 
 starred fate inspired Po Chii-i, the tenderest of 
 all their singers,' Ming Huang is more to literature 
 
 > A.D. 685-762. See p. 73.
 
 A POET'S EMPEROR 19 
 
 than to history. Of his life and times the poets 
 are faithful recorders. Tu Fu in The Old Man of 
 Shao-Ling leaves us this memory of his peaceful 
 days passed in the capital, before the ambition 
 of the Turkic general An Lu-shan had driven his 
 master into exile in far Ssiich'uan, The poet 
 himself is speaking in the character of a lonely 
 old man, wandering slowly down the winding 
 banks of the river Kjo. 
 
 " ' Alas ! ' he murmured, ' they are closed, the 
 thousand palace doors, mirrored in clear cool 
 waters. The young willows and the rushes re- 
 newing with the year for whom will they now 
 grow green ? ' 
 
 " Once in the garden of the South waved the 
 standard of the Emperor. 
 
 " All that nature yields was there, vying with 
 the rarest hues. 
 
 " There lived she whom the love of the first 
 of men had made first among women. 
 
 " She who rode in the imperial chariot, in 
 the excursions on sunny days. 
 
 " Before the chariot flashed the bright escort 
 of maidens armed with bow and arrow. 
 
 *' Mounted upon white steeds which pawed 
 the ground, champing their golden bits. 
 
 " Gaily they raised their heads, launching their 
 arrows into the clouds, 
 
 ** And, laughing, uttered joyous cries when a 
 bird fell victim to their skill."
 
 20 A POET'S EMPEROR 
 
 In the city of Ch'ang-an, with its triple rows of 
 guttering walls with their tall towers uprising at 
 intervals, its seven royal palaces all girdled with 
 gardens, its wonderful Yen tower nine stories 
 high, encased in marble, the drum towers and bell 
 towers, the canals and lakes with their floating 
 theatres, dwelt Ming Huang and T'ai-Chen. 
 Within the royal park on the borders of the lake 
 stood a little pavilion round whose balcony crept 
 jasmine and magnoha branches scenting the air. 
 Just underneath flamed a tangle of peonies in 
 bloom, leaning down to the calm blue waters. 
 Here in the evening the favourite reclined, watch- 
 ing the peonies vie with the sunset beyond. 
 Here the Emperor sent his minister for Li Po, 
 and here the great lyrist set her mortal beauty 
 to glow from the scented, flower-haunted balus- 
 trade immortally through the twilights yet to 
 come. 
 
 What matter if the anow 
 Blot out the garden ? She shall still recline 
 Upon the scented balustrade and glow 
 With spring that thrills her warm blood into wine. 
 
 Once, and once alone, the artist in Ming Huang 
 was merged in the Emperor. In that supreme 
 crisis of the empire and a human soul, when 
 the mutinous soldiers were thronging about the 
 royal tent and clamouring for the blood of the
 
 A POET'S EMPEROR 21 
 
 favourite, it was the Emperor who sent her 
 forth- 
 lily pale. 
 Between tall avenues of spears, to die. 
 
 Policy, the bane of artists demanded it, and so, 
 for the sake of a thousand issues and a common 
 front to the common foe, he placed the love of 
 his life upon the altar of his patriotism, and went, 
 a broken-hearted man, into the long exile. From 
 that moment the Emperor died. History ceases 
 to take interest in the crownless wanderer. His 
 return to the place of tragedy, and on to the 
 capital where the deserted palace awaits him 
 with its memories, his endless seeking for the soul 
 of his beloved, her discovery by the priest of 
 Tao in that island of P'eng Lai where 
 
 gaily coloured towers 
 Rise up like rainbow clouds, and many gentle 
 And beautiful Immortals pass their days in peace, 
 
 her message to her lover with its splendid 
 triumphant note of faith foretelling their reunion 
 at the last in fine, the story of their love with the 
 grave between them is due to the genius of Po 
 Chii-i. And to all poets coming after, these two 
 lovers have been types of romantic and mystic 
 love between man and woman. Through them 
 the symbols of the mandarin duck and drake.
 
 22 A POET'S EMPEROR 
 
 the one- winged birds, the tree whose boughs are 
 interwoven, are revealed. They are the earthly- 
 counterparts of the heavenly lovers, the Cow- 
 herd and the Spinning-maid in the constellations 
 of Lyra and Aquila. To them Chinese poetry 
 owes some of its finest inspirations, and at least 
 two of its greatest singers, Tu Fu and Li Po. 
 
 Chinese Verse Form 
 
 In passing it is necessary to refer to the 
 structure of Chinese verse, which, difficult as it 
 is to grasp and differing in particulars from our 
 European ideas of technique, has considerable 
 interest for the student of verse form and con- 
 struction. 
 
 The favourite metres of the T'ang poets were 
 in lines of five or seven syllables. There is no 
 fixed rule as regards the length of a poem, but, 
 generally speaking, they were composed of four, 
 eight, twelve, or sixteen lines. Only the even 
 lines rhyme, except in the four-line or stop-short 
 poem, when the first line often rhymes with the 
 second and fourth, curiously recalHng the Rubaiyat 
 form of the Persian poets. There is also a break 
 or caesura which in five-syllable verses falls after 
 the second syllable and in seven-syllable verses 
 after the fourth. The Chinese also make use of 
 two kinds of tone in their poetry, the Ping or 
 even, and the Tsze or obHque.
 
 CHINESE VERSE FORM 23 
 
 The even tone has two variations differing 
 from each other only in pitch ; the obhque tone 
 has -three variations, known as " Rising, Sinking, 
 and Entering." In a seven-syllable verse the 
 odd syllables can have any tone ; as regards the 
 even syllables, when the second syllable is even, 
 then the fourth is obhque, and the sixth even. 
 Furthermore, hnes two and three, four and five, 
 six and seven, have the same tones on the even 
 syllables. The origin of the Chinese tone is not 
 a poetical one, but is undoubtedly due to the 
 necessity of having some distinguishing method 
 of accentuation in a language which only contains 
 about four hundred different sounds. 
 
 The Influence of Religion on Chinese 
 Poetry 
 
 To Confucius, as has been already stated, is 
 due that groundwork of Chinese poetry the 
 Odes. But the master gave his fellow country- 
 men an ethical system based upon sound common 
 sense, and a deep knowledge of their customs 
 and characteristics. There is little in the Con- 
 fucian classics to inspire a poet, and we must 
 turn to Buddhism and the mystical philosophy of 
 Lao Tzu for any source of spiritual inspiration 
 from which the poets have drawn. Buddhism 
 and Taoism are sisters. Their parents are self- 
 observance and the Law. Both are quietists,
 
 24 THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 
 
 yet in this respect they differ, that the former 
 is the grey quietist, the latter the pearl. The 
 neutral tint is better adapted to the sister in whose 
 eyes all things are Maya illusion. The shimmer 
 of pearl belongs of right to her whose soul reflects 
 the colour and quiet radiance of a thousand 
 dreams. Compassion urged the one, the love of 
 harmony led the other. How near they were 
 akin ! how far apart they have wandered ! 
 Yet there has always been this essential difference 
 between them, that while the Buddhist regards 
 the senses as windows looking out upon unreality 
 and mirage, to the Taoist they are doors through 
 which the freed soul rushes to mingle with the 
 colours and tones and contours of the universe. 
 Both Buddha and Lao Tzu are poets, one hstening 
 to the rhythm of infinite sorrow, one to the 
 rhythm of infinite joy. Neither knows anything 
 of reward at the hands of men or angels. The 
 teaching of the Semitic religions, " Do good to 
 others that you may benefit at their hands," 
 does not occur in their pages, nor any hints of 
 sensuous delights hereafter. In all the great 
 Buddhist poems, of which the Shu Hsing Tsan 
 Ching is the best example, there is the same 
 deep sadness, the haunting sorrow of doom. To 
 look on beautiful things is only to feel more 
 poignantly the passing of bright days, and the 
 time when the petals must leave the rose. The 
 form of desire hides within it the seeds of decay.
 
 ON CHINESE POETRY 26 
 
 .h^..^'^'''^^'' '' ^^^^^d exceedingly beautiful 
 
 of their steadfast heartT|;;^^, n"n, ""t "'" 
 to guard yourselves? By relrd.W h '/"" 
 
 toil AT- ,'. ^^^ ''"'^ disentangled hair a, 
 
 mth'^X sho^M^'' "^"'^ '"^"^ Then ',ow 
 amorouXu^T'th^rshrrl ''"l ^'S"''^''' 
 
 impurity, thrunSri Co^rdTrrT- '""^ 
 
 the reality, all desires die out "'"^"""^ ^^"'^ 
 
 How diflerent is this meeting of beauty and 
 
 r Sacred Book, o/ ,ht Bm, vol. xix. pp. 253-4.
 
 26 THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 
 
 Buddhism from the meeting of Ssii-K'ung T'u, the 
 great Taoist poet, with an unknown girl! 
 
 Gathering the water-plants 
 
 From the wild luxuriance of spring. 
 
 Away in the depth of a wild valley 
 
 Anon, I see a lovely girl. 
 
 With green leaves the peach-trees are loaded. 
 
 The breeze blows gently along the stream. 
 
 Willows shade the winding pathj 
 
 Darting orioles collect in groups. 
 
 Eagerly I press forward 
 
 As the reahty grows upon me. . . 
 
 'Tis the eternal theme, 
 
 Which, though old, is ever new.* 
 
 Here is reaUty emerging from the unreal, spring 
 renewing, love and beauty triumphant over death 
 and decay. The girl is the central type and 
 symbol. From her laughing eyes a thousand 
 dead women look out once more on spring, through 
 her poets find their inspiration. Beauty is the 
 key that unlocks the secrets of the frozen world, 
 and brings the dead to hfe again. 
 
 The Symbol of Decay ! 
 
 The Symbol of Immortality ! 
 
 It is perhaps both. There are times when the 
 grave words of the Dhammapada fall like shadows 
 along the path : " What is hfe but the flower or 
 
 * History of Chinese Literature, by ProfeBSor Herbert 
 Giles, p. 180.
 
 ON CHINESE POETRY 27 
 
 the fruit which falls when ripe, yet ever fears the 
 untimely frost ? Once born, there is naught but 
 sorrow ; for who is there can escape death ? From 
 the first moment of life, the result of passionate 
 love and desire, there is nought but the ^bodily 
 form transitional as the Ughtning flash." Yet 
 apart from all transitory passions and the ephe- 
 meral results of mortal love, the song of the 
 Taoist lover soars unstained, untrammelled. Man 
 attains not by himself, nor woman by herself, 
 but, hke the one-winged birds of the Chinese 
 legend, they must rise together. To be a great 
 lover is to be a great mystic, since in the highest 
 conception of mortal beauty that the mind can 
 form there Hes always the unattainable, the 
 unpossessed, suggesting the world of beauty and 
 finaUty beyond our mortal reach. It is in this 
 power of suggestion that the Chinese poets 
 excel. Asked to differentiate between European 
 and Chinese poetry, some critics would perhaps 
 insist upon their particular colour sense, in- 
 stancing the curious fact that where we see blue 
 to them it often appears green, and vice versa, 
 or the tone theories that make their poems so 
 difficult to understand ; in fact, a learned treatise 
 would be written on these lines, to prove that 
 the Chinese poets were not human beings as we 
 understand humanity at all. It is, however, not 
 by this method that we can begin to trace the 
 difference between the poets of East and West,
 
 28 THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 
 
 but in the two aspects of life which no amount 
 of comparison can reconcile. 
 
 To the Chinese such commonplace things as 
 marriage, friendship, and home have an infinitely- 
 deeper meaning than can be attached to them 
 by civiUsation which practically hves abroad, 
 in the hotels and restaurants and open houses 
 of others, where there is no sanctity of the Ufa 
 within, no shrine set apart for the hidden family 
 re-union, and the cult of the ancestral spirit. 
 To the Western world, Hfe, save for the con- 
 ventional hour or so set aside on the seventh 
 day, is a thing profane. In the far East the 
 head of every family is a high-priest in the calling 
 of daily Hfe. It is for this reason that a quietism 
 is to be found in Chinese poetry ill appeahng to 
 the unrest of our day, and as dissimilar to our 
 ideals of existence as the life of the planets is to 
 that of the dark bodies whirUng aimlessly through 
 space.
 
 THE ODES OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 1765-585 B.O. 
 Colkcttd by Confucius about 500 b.o, 
 
 SADNESS 
 
 The sun is ever full and bright, 
 The pale moon waneth night by night. 
 Why should this be ? ^ 
 
 My heart that once was full of light 
 Is but a dying moon to-night. 
 
 But when I dream of thee apart 
 I would the dawn might hftky heart. 
 O sun, to thee. * 
 
 TRYSTING TIME 
 I 
 
 A pretty girl at time o' gloaming 
 Hath whispered me to go and Let her 
 Without the city gate. 
 
 29
 
 so TRYSTING TIME 
 
 I love her, but she tarries coming. 
 Shall I return, or stay and greet her ? 
 I burn, and wait. 
 
 n 
 
 Truly she charmeth all beholders, 
 'Tis she hath given me this jewel, 
 
 The jade of my delight ; 
 But this red jewel- jade that smoulders, 
 To my desire doth add more fuel, 
 New charms to-night. 
 
 m 
 
 She has gathered with her Hly fingers 
 
 A Uly fair and rare to see. 
 Oh ! sweeter still the fragrance lingers 
 
 From the warm hand that gave it me. 
 
 THE SOLDIER 
 
 I cHmbed the barren mountain, 
 
 And my gaze swept far and wide 
 For the red-Ut eaves of my father's home. 
 And I fancied that he sighed : 
 My son has gone for a soldier. 
 
 For a soldier night and day ; 
 But my son is wise, and may yet return, 
 When the drums have died away.
 
 THE SOLDIER 31 
 
 I climbed the grass-clad mountain, 
 
 And my gaze swept far and wide 
 
 For the rosy lights of a little room, 
 
 Where I thought my mother sighed : 
 
 My boy has gone for a soldier, 
 
 He sleeps not day and night ; 
 But my boy is wise, and may yet return, 
 Though the dead He far from sight. 
 
 I climbed the topmost summit, 
 
 And my gaze swept far and wide 
 For the garden roof where my brother stood, 
 And I fancied that he sighed : 
 My brother serves as k soldier 
 
 With his comrades night and day ; 
 But my brother is wise, and may yet return. 
 Though the dead He far away.
 
 CH'U YUAN 
 
 FoiTETH Century, b.o. 
 
 A LOYAL minister to the feudal Prince of Ch'ii, towards tho 
 close of the Chou dynasty. His master having, through 
 disregard of his counsel, been captured by the Ch'in State, 
 Ch'ii Yiian sank into disfavour with his sons, and retired 
 to the hills, where he wrote his famous Li Sao, of which the 
 following is one of the songs. He eventually drowned him- 
 self in the river Mi-Lo, and in spite of the search made for 
 his body, it was never found. The Dragon-boat Festival, 
 held on the fifth day of the fifth moon, was founded in his 
 honour, 
 
 THE LAND OF EXILE 
 
 Methinks there's a genius 
 Roams in the mountains, 
 Girdled with ivy 
 And robed in wisteria, 
 Lips ever smiling, 
 Of noble demeanour, 
 Driving the yellow pard, 
 Tiger-attended, 
 Couched in a chariot 
 With banners of cassia, 
 32
 
 THE LAND OF EXILE 33 
 
 Cloaked with the orchid, 
 
 And crowned with azaleas ; 
 
 CulUng the perfume 
 
 Of sweet flowers, he leaves 
 
 In the heart a dream-blossom, 
 
 Memory haunting. 
 
 But dark is the forest 
 
 Where now is my dweUing, 
 
 Never the Hght of day 
 
 Reaches its shadow. 
 
 Thither a perilous 
 
 Pathway meanders. 
 
 Lonely I stand 
 
 On the loneher hill-top, 
 
 Cloudland beneath me 
 
 And cloudland around me. 
 
 Softly the wind bloweth, 
 
 Softly the rain falls, 
 
 Joy like a mist blots 
 
 The thoughts of my home out ; 
 
 There none would honour me, 
 
 Fallen from honours, 
 
 I gather the larkspur 
 
 Over the hillside, 
 
 Blown mid the chaos 
 
 Of boulder and bellbine ; 
 
 Hating the tyrant 
 
 Who made me an outcast, 
 
 Who of his leisure 
 
 Now spares me no moment : 
 
 3
 
 34 CH'U YUAN 
 
 Drinking the mountain spring, 
 
 Shading at noon-day 
 
 Under the cypress 
 
 My limbs from the sun glare. 
 
 What though he summon me 
 
 Back to his palace, 
 
 I cannot fall 
 
 To the level of princes. 
 
 Now rolls the thunder deep, 
 
 Down the cloud valley, 
 
 And the gibbons around me 
 
 Howl in the long night. 
 
 The gale through the moaning trees 
 
 Fitfully rushes. 
 
 Lonely and sleepless 
 
 I think of my thankless 
 
 Master, and vainly would 
 
 Cradle my sorrow.
 
 WANG SENG-JU 
 
 Sixth Centuby, a.d. 
 
 TEARS 
 
 High o'er the hill the moon barque steers. 
 
 The lantern lights depart. 
 Dead springs are stirring in my heart ; 
 
 And there are tears. . . . 
 But that which makes my grief more deep 
 Is that you know not when I weep. 
 
 86
 
 CH'EN TZU-ANG 
 
 A.D. 656-698 
 
 Famous for writing that kind of impromptu descriptive 
 verse which the Chinese call " Ying." In temperament he 
 was less Chinese than most of his contemporaries. His 
 passionate disposition finally brought him into trouble with 
 the magistrate of his district, who had him cast into prison, 
 where he died at the age of forty- two. 
 
 Whatever his outward demeanour may have been, his 
 poetry gives us no indication of it, being fuU of delicate 
 mysticism, almost impossible to reproduce in the English 
 language. For this reason I have chosen one of his simpler 
 poems as a specimen. 
 
 THE LAST EEVEL 
 
 From silver lamps a thin blue smoke is streaming, 
 And golden vases 'mid the feast are gleaming ; 
 Now sound the lutes in unison, 
 Within the gates our lives are one. 
 We'll think not of the parting ways 
 As long as dawn delays. 
 
 36
 
 THE LAST REVEL 37 
 
 When in tall trees the dying moonbeams quiver : 
 When floods of fire efface the Silver River, 
 
 Then comes the hour when I must seek 
 Lo-Yang beyond the furthest peak. 
 But the warm twihght round us twain 
 Will never rise again.
 
 SUNG CHIH-WEN 
 
 DrSD A.D. 710 
 
 The son of a distinguished general, he began his career as 
 attache to the military advisers of the Emperor. These 
 advisers were always drawn from the Uterary class, and their 
 duties appear to have been chiefly administrative and 
 diplomatic. Of his life, the less said the better. He became 
 involved in a palace intrigue, and only saved himself by 
 betraying his accomplices. In the end he was banished, 
 and finally put to death by the Emperor's order. It is 
 necessary, however, to dissociate the man from his poetry, 
 and Sung Chih-Wen's poetry often touches a high level 
 of inspiration. 
 
 THE COURT OF DREAMS 
 
 Rain from the mountains of Ki-Sho 
 Fled swiftly with a tearing breeze ; 
 The sun came radiant down the west, 
 And greener blushed the valley trees. 
 
 T entered through the convent gate : 
 The abbot bade me welcome there, 
 And in the court of silent dreams 
 I lost the thread of worldly care. 
 
 38
 
 THE COURT OF DREAMS 39 
 
 That holy man and I were one, 
 Beyond the bounds that words can trace : 
 The very flowers were still as we. 
 I heard the lark that hung in space, 
 And Truth Eternal flashed on me.
 
 KAO-SHIH 
 
 CIRCA A.D. 700 
 
 Onb of the most fascinating of all the T'ang poeta. His 
 life was one long series of romantic adventure. At first, a 
 poor youth battling with adversity ; then the lover of an 
 actress, whom he followed through the provinces, play- 
 writing for the strolling troupe to which she was attached ; 
 the next, secretary to a high personage engaged in a mission 
 to Thibet ; then soldier, and finally poet of renown, acquiring 
 with his latter years the fortune and honours denied him 
 in his youth. 
 
 The chief characteristics of his poetry are intense con- 
 centration, a vivid power of impressionism, and a strong 
 leaning in the direction of the occult. Indeed, one of his 
 best-known poems, " The Return to the Mountains," makes 
 mention of the projection of the astral body through space 
 during sleep. Many of his poems leave us with a strange 
 sense of horror which is suggested rather than revealed. 
 It is always some combination of effects which produces 
 this result, and never a concrete form. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF A TRAVELLER 
 
 In a silent, desolate spot, 
 In the night stone-frozen and clear, 
 The wanderer's hand on the sail 
 Is gripped by the fingers of fear. 
 
 40
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF A TRAVELLER 41 
 
 He looketh afar o'er the waves, 
 Wind-ruffled and deep and green ; 
 And the mantle of Autumn lies 
 Over wood and hill and ravine. 
 
 'Tis Autumn ! time of decay, 
 And the dead leaves' 'wildering flight ; 
 And the mantle of Autumn hes 
 On the wanderer's soul to-night 1 
 
 DESOLATION 
 
 There was a King of Liang ' a king of wondrous 
 
 might 
 Who kept an open palace, where music charmed 
 
 the night 
 
 n 
 
 Since he was Lord of Liang a thousand years 
 
 have flown, 
 And of the towers he builded yon ruin stands 
 
 alone. 
 
 > strictly speaking, the pronunciation of all words such as 
 Liang, Kiang, etc., is nearer one syllable than two. For 
 purposes of euphony, however, without which the lines would 
 be harsh and unpoetical, I have invariably made two syllables 
 of them.
 
 42 KAO-SHIH 
 
 in 
 
 There reigns a heavy silence ; gaunt weeds 
 
 through windows pry, 
 And down the streets of Liang old echoes, wailing, 
 
 die.
 
 MENG HAO-JAN 
 
 i..D. 689-740 
 
 One of the few literary men of the day whose later life was 
 devoted entirely to literature. He was the inseparable friend 
 of the famous Buddhist poet and doctor, Wang Wei. He 
 spent the first forty years of his life in acquiring knowledge, 
 but having failed to obtain his doctor's degree, he returned 
 to the quiet hills of his native province and dedicated his 
 remaining years to composition. Most of his poems, other 
 than certain political satire, which drew on him the Emperor's 
 wrath, are full of subtle sadness and fragrant regret, reminding 
 one of pot-pourri in some deep blue porcelain bowl. 
 
 THE LOST ONE 
 
 The red gleam o'er the mountains 
 Goes wavering from sight, 
 
 And the quiet moon enhances 
 The loveliness of night. 
 
 I open wide my casement 
 
 To breathe the rain-cooled air. 
 
 And mingle with the moonlight 
 The dark waves of my hair. 
 
 43
 
 44 MENG HAO-JAN 
 
 The night wind tells me secrets 
 
 Of lotus hhes blue ; 
 And hour by hour the willows 
 
 Shake down the chiming dew# 
 
 I fain would take the zither, 
 By some stray fancy led ; 
 
 But there are none to hear me, 
 And who can charm the dead ? 
 
 So all my day-dreams follow 
 The bird that leaves the nest ; 
 
 And in the night I gather 
 The lost one to my breast. 
 
 A FRIEND EXPECTED 
 
 Over the chain of giant peaks 
 
 The great red sun goes down. 
 
 And in the stealthy floods of night 
 The distant vaUeys drown. 
 
 Yon moon that cleaves the gloomy pines 
 Has freshness in her train ; 
 
 Low wind, faint stream, and waterfall 
 Haunt me with their refrain.
 
 A FRIEND EXPECTED 45 
 
 The tired woodman seeks his cot 
 
 That twinkles up the hill ; 
 And sleep has touched the wanderers 
 
 That sang the twiUght still. 
 
 To-night ah ! beauty of to-night 
 
 I need my friend to praise, 
 So take the lute to lure him on 
 
 Through the fragrant, dew-lit ways.
 
 CH'ANG CH'IEN 
 
 cmoA A.D. 720 
 
 Onb of the great philosopher-poets of the Taoist school. 
 His life was spent far from the court and away from the 
 sounds of civil warfare, in the endeavour to set himself in 
 harmony with the universe to become, in fact, like an iEolian 
 harp through which all the chords of nature might sweep at 
 will. How far he attained the end desired may be seen in 
 his work, which is penetrated by a sense of profound beauty, 
 recalling the quiet twilight upon the moimtain-side, which 
 he 80 well describes. 
 
 A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 I sat upon the mountain-side and watched 
 A tiny barque that skimmed across the lake, 
 Drifting, Hke human destiny upon 
 A world of hidden peril ; then she sailed 
 From out my ken, and mingled with the blue 
 Of skies unfathomed, while the great round sun 
 Weakened towards the waves. 
 
 46
 
 A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN 47 
 
 The whole expanse 
 Suddenly in the half-light of the dusk 
 Glimmered and waned. The last rays of the sun 
 Lit but the tops of trees and mountain-peaks 
 With tarnished glory ; and the water's sheen, 
 Once blue and bright, grew lustreless, and soon 
 A welter of red clouds alone betrayed 
 The passing of the sun. The scattered isles 
 Uprose, black-looming o'er the tranquil deeps, 
 Where the reflected heavens wanly showed 
 A Hngering gleam. Already wood and hill 
 Sank in obscurity. The river marge 
 Seemed but a broken line to failing sight. 
 
 
 Night is at hand ; the night winds fret afar, 
 The North winds moan. The waterfowl are gone 
 To cover o'er the sand-dunes ; dawn alone 
 Shall call them from the sedges. Some bright star 
 
 Mirrors her charms upon the silver shoal ; 
 And I have ta'en the lute, my only friend : 
 The vibrant chords beneath my fingers blend ; 
 They sob awhile, then as they shp control 
 
 Immortal memories awake, and the dead years 
 Through deathless voices answer to my strings. 
 Till from the brink of Time's untarnished springs 
 The melting night recalls me with her tears.
 
 TS'EN-TS'AN 
 
 OIROA A.D. 750 
 
 Of his life we know little, save that he was the intimate 
 friend of the great poet Tu Fu, and came of a noble family. 
 He was, moreover, Censor imder the Emperor Su Tsung 
 (a.d. 756-762), and rose to be Governor of Chia-chou. What 
 remains of his verse mostly takes the form of quatrains, 
 yet for originahty of thought, wealth of imagery and style, 
 they have seldom been excelled. He was a master of metre, 
 and contributed certain modifications to the laws of Chinese 
 prosody which exist to the present day. 
 
 A DREAM OF SPRING 
 
 Last night within my chamber's gloom some 
 
 vague light breath of Spring 
 Came wandering and whispering, and bade my 
 
 soul take wing. 
 
 A hundred moonlit miles away the Chiang crept 
 
 to sea; 
 keeper of my heart, I came by Chiang's ford 
 
 to thee. 
 
 48
 
 A DREAM OF SPRING 49 
 
 It lingered but a moment's space, that dream of 
 
 Spring, and died ; 
 Yet as my head the pillows pressed, my soul had 
 
 found thy side. 
 
 Oh ! Chiang Nan's a hundred miles, yet in a 
 
 moment's space 
 I've fiovm away to Chiang Nan and touched a 
 
 dreaming face.
 
 TU FU 
 
 A.D. 712-770 
 
 Ttj Ftt, whom his countrymen called the God of Verse, was 
 bom in the province of Hu-Kuang, tind this was his portrait 
 from contemporaries : 
 
 He was tall and slightly built, yet robust with finely 
 chiselled features ; his manners were exquisite, and his 
 appearance distinguished. He came of a hterary family, 
 and, as he says of himself, from his seventh to his fortieth 
 year study and letters occupied all his available time. At 
 the age of twenty-seven he came to the capital with his 
 fame in front of him, and there Li Po the poet and Ts'en Ts'an 
 became his friends, and Ming Huang his patron. He obtained 
 a post at Court somewhat similar to that of Master of Cere- 
 monies in our own Court. Yet the poet had few sympathies 
 outside the artistic life. He was so unworldly and so little 
 of a courtier that when ihe new Emperor Su Tsung returned- 
 in triumph to the capital and appointed him Imperial Censor, 
 he fulfilled his new duties by telling his majesty the whole 
 unpalatable truth in a manner strangely free from ornamental 
 apology, and was promptly rewarded with the exile of a pro- 
 vincial governorship. But Tu Fu was no man of affairs, and 
 knew it. On the day of his pubhc installation he took off 
 his insignia of office before the astonished notables, and, 
 laying them one by one on the table, made them a profound 
 reverence, and quietly withdrew. 
 
 60
 
 TU FU 51 
 
 Like his friend Li Po, he became a homeless wanderer, 
 but, unlike him, he concealed his brilliant name, obtaining 
 food and patronage for his delightful nameless self alone, 
 and not for his reputation's sake. Finally, he was discovered 
 by the military governor of the province of Ssuch'uan, who 
 applied on his behalf for the post of Eestorer of Ancient 
 Monuments in the district, the one congenial appointment 
 of his life. For six years he kept his post ; then trouble in 
 the shape of rebel hordes burst once more upon the province, 
 and again he became an exile. The last act of this eventful 
 life took place in his native district : some local mandarin 
 gave a great banquet in honour of the distinguished poet, 
 whom he had rescued, half drowned and famishing, from the 
 ruined shrine by the shore where the waters had cast him 
 up. The wine-cup brimmed again and again, food was 
 piled up in front of the honoured guest, and the attendant 
 who waited was Death. The end was swift, sudden, and 
 pitiful. The guest died from the banquet of his rescuer. 
 
 Of all poets Tu Fu is the first in craftsmanship. It is 
 interesting to add that he was a painter as well, and the 
 friend of painters, notably the soldier-artist, Kaang-Tu, 
 to whom he dedicates a poem. Possibly it is to this faculty 
 that he owes his superb technique. He seeks after simplicity 
 and its effects as a diver seeks for sunken gold. In his poem 
 called " The Little Rain," which I have (perhaps somewhat 
 rashly) attempted, there is aU the graciousness of fine rain 
 falling upon sullen furrows, which charms the world into 
 spring. " The Recruiting Sergeant " has the touch of grim 
 desolation, which belongs inevitably to a country plundered 
 of its men and swept with the ruinous winds of rebellion. 
 
 Li Po gives us Watteau-like pictures of life in Ch'ang-an 
 before the flight of the Emperor. The yoimger poet paints, 
 with the brush of Verestchagin, the realism and horrora 
 of civil war. In most of Tu Fu's work there is an under- 
 lying sadness which appears continually, sometimes in 
 the vein that runs throu^out the poem, sometimes 
 at the conclusion, and often at the summing up of all
 
 62 TU FU 
 
 things. Other poets have it, some more, some less, with 
 the exception of those who belong to the purely Taoist 
 school. The reason is that the Chinese poet is haunted. 
 He is haunted by the vast shadow of a past without his- 
 torians a past that is legendary, unmapped and imbounded, 
 and yields, therefore, Golcondas and golden lands innumerable 
 to its bold adventurers. He is haimted from out the crumbled 
 palaces of vanished kings, where " in the form of blue flames 
 one sees spirits moving through each dark recess." He 
 is haunted by the traditional voices of the old masters of 
 his craft, and lastly, more than all, by the dead women and 
 men of his race, the ancestors that coimt in the making of 
 his composite soul and have their silent say in every action, 
 thought, and impulse of his hfe. 
 
 THE LITTLE RAIN 
 
 Oh ! she is good, the little rain ! and well she 
 knows our need 
 
 Who Cometh in the time of spring to aid the sun- 
 drawn seed ; 
 
 She wanders with a friendly wind through silent 
 nights unseen, 
 
 The furrows feel her happy tears, and lo ! the land 
 is green. 
 
 Last night cloud-shadows gloomed the path that 
 
 winds to my abode, 
 And the torches of the river-boats like angry 
 
 meteors glowed.
 
 THE LITTLE RAIN 63 
 
 To-day fresh colours break the soil, and butterflies 
 
 take wing 
 Down broidered lawns all bright with pearls in 
 
 the garden of the King. 
 
 A NIGHT OP SONG 
 
 The wind scarce flutters through the leaves, 
 The young moon hath already gone, 
 And kind and cool the dews descend : 
 The lute-strings wake for night alone. 
 
 In shadow lapse the twinkling streams. 
 The lilied marge their waves caress ; 
 And the sheer constellations sway 
 O'er soundless gulfs of nothingness. 
 
 What cadence charms the poet's ear ! 
 What fire-fly fancies round him swarm ! 
 He dreads the lantern lights may fail 
 Long ere his thoughts have taken form. 
 
 Now gallants tap their two-edged swords. 
 And pride and passion swell amain ; 
 Like red stars flashing through the night 
 The circhng wine-cups brim again.
 
 54 TU FU 
 
 There steals the old sad air of Ou 
 Each calls his latest song to mind ; 
 Then white sails taper down the stream, 
 While lingering thoughts still look behind. 
 
 THE RECRUITING SERGEANT 
 
 At sunset in the village of Che-Kao * 
 
 I sought for shelter ; on my heels there trod 
 
 A grim recruiting sergeant, of the kind 
 
 That seize their prey by night. A poor old man 
 
 Saw scaled the wall, and vanished. Through 
 
 the gate 
 An old bent woman hobbled, and she marched 
 A pace before him. Loudly in his wrath 
 The grim recruiter stormed ; and bitterly 
 She answered : " Listen to the voice of her 
 Who drags before you. Once I had three sons 
 Three in the Emperor's camp. A letter came 
 From one, and there was one ; the others fell 
 In the same battle he alone was left, 
 Scarce able from the iron grasp of Death 
 To tear his miserable Ufe. 
 
 Alas 
 My two dead boys ! for ever and for aye 
 
 1 All words ending in ao are pronounced ow, ae in English 
 vow, allow, etc.
 
 THE RECRUITING SERGEANT 66 
 
 Death holds them. In our wretched hut remains 
 The last of all the men a little child, 
 Still at his mother's breast. She cannot flee. 
 Since her few tatters scarce suffice to clothe 
 Her shrunken hmbs. 
 
 My years are nearly done, 
 My strength is well-nigh spent ; yet I wilf go 
 Readily to the camping-ground. Perchance 
 I may be useful for some humble task, 
 To cook the rice or stir the morning meal." 
 
 Night slipped away. The clamour and the cries 
 Died down ; but there was weeping and the sound 
 Of stifled moans around me. 
 
 At the break 
 Of dawn I hurried on my road, and left 
 None but an old and broken man behind. 
 
 CHANTS OF AUTUMN 
 
 Shorn by the frost with crystal blade, 
 The dry leaves, scattered, fall at last ; 
 Among the valleys of Wu Chan 
 Cold winds of death go waihng past. 
 Tumultuous waves of the great river rise 
 
 And seem to storm the skies. 
 While snow-bright peak and prairie mist combine, 
 And greyness softens the harsh mountain Hne.
 
 56 TU FU 
 
 Clirysanthemums unfurl to-day, 
 To-morrow the last flowers are blown. 
 I am the barque that chains delay : 
 My homeward thoughts must sail alone. 
 
 From house to house warm winter robes are 
 spread, 
 
 And through the pine-woods red 
 
 Floats up the sound of the washerman's bat 
 who phes 
 
 His hurried task ere the brief noon wanes and dies.
 
 LI PO 
 
 A.D, 702-762 
 
 Thb most famous name in Chinese literature. Bom in the 
 province of Ssuch'uan, Li Po obtained his doctor's degree 
 at the age of twenty, and was akeady known as a brilliant, 
 inspired poet before Ming Huang became his patron in the 
 capital. A suite of rooms overlooking the beautiful gardens 
 of T'eng-hsiang T'ing, where the Emperor retired after the 
 routine of the day, was assigned to him. Here the poet 
 improvised, whilst Ming Huang himself wrote down the 
 verses that he afterwards set to music, and accompanied 
 while the poet sang. But Li Po, with all his enthusiasm for 
 his patron and the delights of the garden-life, was Uttle of 
 a courtier. When Ming Huang bade the masterful eunuch 
 Kao Li-shih unlace the poet's boots, he gave him a relentless 
 enemy whose malice pursued him, until at length he was glad 
 to beg leave to retire from the court, where he was never at 
 ease and to which he never returned. Troubadour-like, 
 he wandered through the provinces, the guest of mandarin 
 and local governor, the star of the drinking-tavems, the 
 delight and embarrassment of all his hosts. At length a 
 friend of former days, to whom he had attached himself, 
 unhappily involved him in the famous rebellion of An Lu-shan. 
 The poet was seized and thrown into prison. Yet prison 
 doors were ill warders of his fame, and letters of recall 
 followed closely upon pardon ; but death overtook the exile 
 
 57
 
 68 LI PO 
 
 before he could reach the capital, and at the age of sixty 
 his wanderings came to an end. 
 
 Li Po was a poet with a sword by his side. He would 
 have ruffled bravely with our Elizabethans, and for a Chinese 
 is strangely warlike in sentiment. How he loves the bravo 
 of Chao with his sabre from the Chinese Sheffield of Wu, 
 *' with the surface smooth as ice and dazzling as snow, with 
 his saddle broidered with silver upon his white steed ; who 
 when he passes, swift as the wind, may be said to resemble 
 a shooting star ! " He compares the frontiersman, who 
 has never so much as opened a book in all his Hfe, yet knows 
 how to foUow in the chase, and is skilful, strong, and hardy, 
 with the men of his own profession. " From these intrepid 
 wanderers how different our hterary men who grow grey 
 over their books behind a curtained window." 
 
 It is harder to write of Li Po than of any other Chinese 
 poet. Po Chu-i has his own distinctive feeHng for romance, 
 Tu Fu his miniite literary craftsmanship, Ssu-K'ung T'u the 
 dehcate aroma of suggestive mysticism ; but Li Po is many- 
 sided, and has perhaps more of the world-spirit than all 
 of them. We can imagine this bold, careless, impulsive 
 artist, with his moments of great exaltation and alternate 
 depression, a kind of Chinese Paul Verlaine, with his sensitive 
 mind of a child, always recording impressions as they come. 
 T'ai Ch&n the beautiful and the grim frontiersman are alike 
 faithfully portrayed. He lives for the moment, and the 
 moment is often wine-flushed like the rosy glow of dawn, 
 or grey and wan as the twihght of a hopeless day. 
 
 TO THE CITY OF NAN-KESTG 
 
 Thou that hast seen six kingdoms pass away, 
 Accept my song and these three cups I drain ! 
 There may be fairer gardens hght the plain ; 
 Thine are the dim blue hills more fair than they.
 
 TO THE CITY OF NAN-KING 69 
 
 Here Kings of Wu were crowned and overthrown, 
 Where peaceful grass along the ruin wins ; 
 Here was it yesterday ? the royal Tsins 
 Called down the dreams of sunset into stone. 
 
 One end awaits for all that mortal be ; 
 Pride and despair shall find a common grave : 
 The Yang-tse-kiang renders wave and wave 
 To mingle with the abysms of the sea. 
 
 MEMORIES WITH THE DUSK RETURN 
 
 The yellow dusk winds round the city wall : 
 The crows are drawn to nest, 
 Silently down the west 
 
 They hasten home, and from the branches call. 
 
 A woman sits and weaves with fingers deft 
 Her story of the flower-ht stream, 
 Threading the jasper gauze in dream. 
 
 Till like faint smoke it dies ; and she, bereft, 
 Recalls the parting words that died 
 
 Under the casement some far eventide. 
 And stays the disappointed loom. 
 While from the Httle lonely room 
 Into the lonely night she peers, 
 
 And, like the rain, unheeded fall her tears.
 
 60 LI PO 
 
 AN emperor's love 
 
 In all the clouds he sees her light robes trail, 
 And roses seem beholden to her face ; 
 O'er scented balustrade the scented gale 
 Blows warm from Spring, and dew-drops form 
 
 apace. 
 Her outline on the mountain he can trace, 
 Now leans she from the tower in moonlight pale. 
 
 A flower-girt branch grows sweeter from the 
 
 dew. 
 The spirit of snow and rain unheeded calls. 
 Who wakes to memory in these palace walls ? 
 Fei-yen ! * but in the robes an Empress knew. 
 
 The most renowned of blossoms, most divine 
 Of those whose conquering glances overthrow 
 Cities and kingdoms, for his sake combine 
 And win the ready smiles that ever flow 
 From royal Hps. What matter if the snow 
 Blot out the garden ? She shall still recline 
 Upon the scented balustrade and glow 
 With spring that thrills her warm blood into 
 wine. 
 
 ^ A delicate compliment to the beautiful T'ai-Chn, of 
 which the meaning is that, as the Emperor Yang-ti of 
 the Sui dynasty elevated his mistress Fei-yen to share with 
 him the throne, so shall T'ai-Chen become the Empress of 
 Ming Huang.
 
 ON THE BANKS OF JO-YEH 61 
 
 ON THE BANKS OF JO-EH 
 
 They gather liKes down the stream, 
 A net of willows drooping low 
 Hides boat from boat ; and to and fro 
 Sweet whispered confidences seem 
 'Mid laughing trills to flow. 
 
 In the green deeps a shaft of gold 
 Limns their elaborate attire ; 
 Through silken sleeves the winds aspire, 
 Embalmed, to stray, and, growing bold, 
 Swell them to their desire. 
 
 But who are these, the cavaHers 
 That gleam along the river-side ? 
 By three, by five they prance with pride 
 Beyond the willow-line that sheers 
 Over the trellised tide. 
 
 A charger neighs ; one turns to start, 
 Crushing the kingcups as he flies. 
 And one pale maiden vainly tries 
 To hush the tumult in her heart 
 And veil the secret of her eyes. 
 
 THOUGHTS IN A TRANQUIL NIGHT 
 
 Athwart the bed 
 I watch the moonbeams cast a trail 
 So bright, so cold, so frail.
 
 62 LI PO 
 
 That for a space it gleams 
 Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. 
 
 I raise my head, 
 The splendid moon I see : 
 
 Then droop my head, 
 And sink to dreams of thee 
 My Fatherland, of thee ! 
 
 THE GUILD OF GOOD-FELLOWSHIP 
 
 The universe is but a tenement 
 Of all things visible. Darkness and day 
 The passing guests of Time. Life slips away, 
 A dream of Uttle joy and mean content. 
 
 Ah ! wise the old philosophers who sought 
 To lengthen their long sunsets among flowers, 
 By steahng the young night's unsullied hours 
 And the dim moments with sweet burdens fraught. 
 
 And now Spring beckons me with verdant hand, 
 And Nature's wealth of eloquence doth win 
 Forth to the fragrant-bowered nectarine. 
 Where my dear friends abide, a careless band. 
 
 There meet my gentle, matchless brothers, there 
 I come, the obscure poet, all unfit 
 To wear the radiant jewellery of wit. 
 And in their golden presence cloud the air.
 
 THE GUILD OF GOOD-FELLOWSHIP 63 
 
 And while the thrill of meeting lingers, soon 
 As the first courtly words, the feast is spread. 
 While, couched on flowers 'mid wine-cups flashing 
 
 red, 
 We drink deep draughts unto The Lady Moon. 
 
 Then as without the touch of verse divine 
 There is no outlet for the pent-up soul, 
 'Twas ruled that he who quaffed no fancy's bowl 
 Should drain the " Golden Valley " cups of 
 wine. 
 
 UNDER THE MOON 
 
 Under the crescent moon's faint glow 
 The washerman's bat resounds afar. 
 And the autumn breeze sighs tenderly. 
 But my heart has gone to the Tartar war. 
 To bleak Kansuh and the steppes of snow, 
 Calling my husband back to me. 
 
 DRIFTING 
 
 We cannot keep the gold of yesterday ; 
 To-day's dun clouds we cannot roll away. 
 
 * i.e. drink three cupa of wine, the " Golden Valley " 
 being the name of a garden, the owner of which enforced this 
 penalty among his boon companions (Oema of Chinese 
 Literature, p. 113).
 
 64 LI PO 
 
 Now the long, wailing flight of geese brings autumn 
 
 in its train, 
 So to the view-tower cup in hand to fill and drink 
 
 again, 
 
 And dream of the great singers of the 
 
 past, 
 Their fadeless lines of fire and beauty cast. 
 I too have felt the wild-bird thrill of song behind 
 
 the bars, 
 But these have brushed the world aside and 
 ivalked amid the stars. 
 
 In vain we cleave the torrent's thread with 
 
 steel, 
 In vain we drink to drown the grief we 
 feel ; 
 When man's desire with fate doth war this, this 
 
 avails alone 
 To hoist the sail and let the gale and the waters 
 bear us on.
 
 WANG CH'ANG-LING 
 
 OIBCA A.D. 750 
 
 This poet came from the district of Chiang-ning to the capital, 
 where he obtained his doctor's degree and distinguished 
 himself as a man of letters. For some time he filled a minor 
 post, but was eventually disgraced and exiled to the province 
 of Hunan. When the rebellion of An Lu-shan broke out, he 
 returned to his native place, where he was cruelly murdered 
 by the censor Lu Ch'in-hsiao. (See Hervey Saint-Denys, 
 Poesies des Thang, p. 224; Giles, Biog. Diet. p. 8087.) 
 
 THE SONO OF THE NENUPHARS 
 
 Leaves of the Nenuphars and silken skirts the 
 same pale green, 
 
 On flower and laughing face alike the same rose- 
 tints are seen ; 
 
 Like some blurred tapestry they blend within 
 the lake displayed : 
 
 You cannot part the leaves from silk, the Uly 
 from the maid. 
 
 Only when sudden voices swell 
 Do maidens of their presence tell. 
 
 66 6
 
 66 WANG CH'ANG-LING 
 
 Here long ago the girls of Su, the darlings of the 
 
 King, 
 Dabbled their shining skirts with dew from the 
 
 gracious blooms of Spring. 
 When to the lake's sun-dimpled marge the bright 
 
 procession wends, 
 The languid lilies raise their heads as though to 
 
 greet their friends ; 
 
 When down the river-banks they roam, 
 The white moon-lady leads them home. 
 
 TEARS IN THE SPRING 
 
 Clad in blue silk and bright embroidery 
 At the first call of Spring the fair young bride, 
 On whom as yet Sorrow has laid no scar, 
 Climbs the Kingfisher's Tower, Suddenly 
 She sees the bloom of willows far and wide, 
 And grieves for him she lent to fame and war.
 
 CHANG CHIH-HO 
 
 CIRCA A..D. 750 
 
 A Taoist philosopher who lived in the time of the Emperor 
 Su Tsung, and held office under him. For some offence he 
 was exiled, and the royal pardon found him far too occupied 
 to dream of return. 
 
 Like so many of the same philosophy, he became a lonely 
 wanderer, calling himself the "Old Fisherman of the Miste 
 and Waters." Professor Giles {Chinese Literature, p. 191) 
 adds the curious statement that " he spent his time in anghng, 
 but used no bait, his object not being to catch fish." 
 
 A WORLD ArART 
 
 The Lady Moon is my lover, 
 
 My friends are the oceans four, 
 The heavens have roofed me over, 
 
 And the dawn is my golden doon 
 I would hefer follow the condor 
 
 Or the seagull, soaring from ken, 
 Than bury my godhead yonder 
 
 In the dust of the whirl of men. 
 
 67
 
 CHANG JO-HU 
 
 OIBCA A.D. 800 
 
 When heaven reveals her primal stainless blue, 
 Alone within the firmament there burns 
 The tiny torch of dusk. What startled eyes 
 Uplifted from the restless stream first met 
 The full round glory of the moon ! Yon orb 
 That pales upon the flood of broad Chiang, 
 When did she first through twilight mists unveil 
 Her wonders to the world ? 
 
 Men come and go ; 
 New generations hunger at the heels 
 Of those that yield possession. Still the moon 
 Fulfils her phases. While the tides of time 
 Eat out the rocks of empire, and the stars 
 Of human destiny adown the void 
 Go guttering to their doom, she changeless sweeps 
 Through all her times and destinies. Alas ! 
 The httle lives that swarmed beneath the moon, 
 I cannot count them. This alone I know 
 That, wave on wave, the Chiang seeks the sea, 
 And not a wave returns. 
 
 68
 
 CHANG JO-HXr 69 
 
 One small white cloud 
 Threading the vasty vault of heaven recalls 
 My heart unto her loneliness. I sail 
 Between two banks, where heavy boughs enlace, 
 Whose verdurous luxuriance wakes once more 
 My many griefs. None know me as I am, 
 Steering to strange adventure. None may tell 
 If, steeped in the same moonlight, lies afar 
 Some dim pavilion where my lady dreams 
 Of me. Ah, happy moon ! low lingering moon I 
 That with soft touch now brightens into jade 
 Lintel and door, and when she lifts the bhnd 
 Floats through the darkened chamber of her 
 
 sleep ; 
 While leagues away my love-winged messages 
 Go flocking home ; and though they mingle not. 
 Our thoughts seek one another. In the lilt 
 Of winds I hear her whisper : " Oh that I 
 Might melt into the moonbeams, and with them 
 Leap through the void, and shed myself with them 
 Upon my lover." Slow the night creeps on. 
 Sleep harbours in the little room. She dreams 
 Dreams of a fall o' flowers. Alas ! young Spring 
 Lies on the threshold of maternity. 
 And still he comes not. Still the flowing stream 
 Sweeps on, but the swift torrents of green hours 
 Are licked into the brazen skies between 
 Their widening banks. The great dehberate 
 
 moon 
 Now leans toward the last resort of night,
 
 70 CHANG JO-HU 
 
 Gloom of the western waves. She dips her rim, 
 She sinks, she founders in the mist ; and still 
 The stream flows on, and to the insatiate sea 
 Hurries her white-wave flocks innumerable 
 In never-ending tale. On such a night 
 How many tireless travellers may attain 
 The happy goal of their desire ! So dreams 
 My lady till the moon goes down, and lo ! 
 A rush of troubled waters floods her soul, 
 While black forebodings rise from deeps unknown 
 And the cold trail of fear creeps round her heart.
 
 T'UNG HAN-CHING 
 
 OIKCA A.D. 800 
 THE CELESTIAL WEAVER 
 
 A. THING of stone beside Lake Kouen-ming 
 Has for a thousand autumns borne the name 
 Of the Celestial Weaver. Like that star 
 She shines above the waters, wondering 
 At her pale loveliness. Unnumbered waves 
 Have broidered with green moss the marble 
 
 folds 
 About her feet. Toiling eternally 
 They knock the stone, like tireless shuttles plied 
 Upon a sounding loom. 
 
 Her pearly locks 
 Resemble snow-coils on the mountain top ; 
 Her eyebrows arch the crescent moon. A smile 
 Lies in the opened hly of her face ; 
 And, since she breathes not, being stone, the 
 
 birds 
 
 71
 
 72 T'UNG HAN-CHING 
 
 Light on her shoulders, flutter without fear 
 At her still breast. Immovable she stands 
 Before the shining mirror of her charms 
 And, gazing on their beauty, lets the years 
 SUp into centuries past her. , , ,
 
 PO CHU-I 
 
 A.D. 772-846 
 
 Sbvkntebn years old and already a doctor of letters, a great 
 future was before him. The life of such a man would seem 
 to be one sure progress from honour to honour. Yet it ia 
 to some petty exile, some temporary withdrawal of imperial 
 favour, that we owe " The Lute Girl," perhaps the most 
 delicate piece of work that has survived the age of the golden 
 T'angs. Certainly the music is the most haunting, suggestive 
 of many-coloured moods, with an undertone of sadness, and 
 that motive of sympathy between the artist-exiles of the 
 universe which calls the song from the singer and tears from 
 the heart of the man. So exile brought its consolations, the 
 voice and presence of " The Lute Girl," and the eight nameless 
 poets who became with Po Chii-i the literary communists 
 of Haiang-shan. In China it has always been possible for 
 the artist to live away from the capital. Provincial governor 
 and high ofTicial send for him ; all compete for the honour 
 of his presence. Respect, which is the first word of Chinese 
 wisdom according to Confucius, is paid to him. In provincial 
 Europe his very presence would be unknoAvn unless he beat 
 his wife on the high-road or stole a neighbour's pig. But 
 his Celestial Majesty hears of the simple life at Hsiang-shan 
 and becomes jealous for his servant. The burden of ruhng 
 must once more be laid on not too willing shoulders. Po 
 Chii-i is recalled and promoted from province to province, 
 
 73
 
 74 PO CHU-I ^ 
 
 till eventually, five years before hds death, he is made President 
 of the Board of War. Two short poems here rendered 
 namely, " Peaceful Old Age " and " The Penalties of Rank " 
 give us a ghmpse of the poet in his old age, conscious of 
 decaying powers, glad to be quit cf office, and waiting with 
 subhme faith in his Taoist principles to be "one with the 
 pulsings of Eternity." 
 
 Po Chii-i is almost nearer to the ^^'estem idea of a poet 
 than any other Chinese writer. He was fortunate enough 
 to be bom when the great love-tragedy of Ming Huang and 
 T'ai Chen was stUl fresh in the minds of men. He had the 
 right perspective, being not too near and yet able to see 
 clearly. He had, moreover, the feeling for romance which 
 is so ill-defined in other poets of his country, though strongly 
 evident in Chinese legend and story. He is an example of 
 that higher patriotism rarely met with in Chinese official 
 life which recognises a duty to the Emperor as Father of 
 the national family a duty too often forgotten in the obli- 
 gation to the clan and the desire to use power for personal 
 advantage. Passionately devoted to hterature, he might, 
 like Li i o and Tu Fu, have set down the seals of office and 
 lived for art alone by the mountain-side of his beloved Hsiang- 
 shan. But no one knew better than Po Chii-i that from 
 him that hath much, much shall be expected. The poet 
 ennobled political life, the broader outlook of affairs enriched 
 his poetry and humanised it. 
 
 And when some short hoUday brought him across the 
 frontier, and the sunlight, breaking out after a noon of rain 
 over the dappled valleys of China, called him home, who 
 shall blame him for lingering awhile amid his forest dreams 
 with his fishing and the chase. 
 
 Yet solitude and the picturesque cannot hold him for 
 long, nor even the ardours of the chase. Po Chii-i is above 
 all the poet of human love and sorrow, and beyond all the 
 consoler. Those who profess to find pessimism in the Chinese 
 character must leave him alone. At the end of the great 
 tragedy of " The Never-ending Wrong " a whispered message
 
 THE LUTE GIRL 75 
 
 of hope is borne to the lonely soul beating against the confines 
 of the visible world : , , ,, * t. _* 
 
 " Tell my lord," she murmured, " to be firm of heart as 
 this gold and enamel ; then in heaven or earth below we 
 twain may meet once more." 
 
 It is tlic doctrine of eternal constancy, so dimly understood 
 in the Western world, which bids the young wife immolate 
 herself on her husband's tomb rather than marry again, and 
 makes the whole world seem too small for the stricken 
 Emperor with all the youth and beauty of China to command. 
 
 THE LUTE GIRL 
 
 The following is Po Chu-i's own preface to his poem : 
 
 When after ten years of regular service, I was wrongfully 
 dismissed from the Prefecture of the Nine Rivers and the 
 Mastership of the Horse, in the bright autumn of the year 1 
 was sent away to Ko-pen Creek's mouth. It was there that 
 I heard, seated in my boat at midnight, the faint tones of a lute. 
 It seemed as though I was listening to the tones of the gongs 
 in the Palace of the CafAtal. On asking an old man, I learrU 
 that it was the performance of a woman who for many years 
 had cultivated the two talents of music and singing to good 
 effect In the course of time her beauty faded, she humbled 
 her pride, and followed her fate by becoming a mercharU's wife. 
 
 
 
 The wine ran out and the songs ceased. My grief was such 
 that I made a few short poems to set to music for singing. 
 
 * * 
 
 But now perturbed, engulfed, distressed, worn out, I nuwe 
 about the river and lake at my leisure. I have been out of
 
 76 PO CHU-I 
 
 office for two years, hut the effect of this man's words is such 
 as to produce a peaceful influence within me. 
 
 This evening I feel that I have dismissed all the reproachful 
 thoughts I harboured, and in consequence have made a long 
 poem which I intend to present to the court. 
 
 By night, beside the river, underneath 
 
 The flower-Hke maple leaves that bloom alone 
 
 In autumn's silent revels of decay, 
 
 We said farewell. The host, dismounting, sped 
 
 The parting guest whose boat rocked under him, 
 
 And when the circling stirrup-cup went round, 
 
 No light guitar, no lute, was heard again ; 
 
 But on the heart aglow with wine there fell 
 
 Beneath the cold bright moon the cold adieu 
 
 Of fading friends when suddenly beyond 
 
 The cradled waters stole the lullaby 
 
 Of some faint lute ; then host forgot to go, 
 
 Guest lingered on : all, wondering at the spell, 
 
 Besought the dim enchantress to reveal 
 
 Her presence ; but the music died and gave 
 
 No answer, dying. Then a boat shot forth 
 
 To bring the shy musician to the shore. 
 
 Cups w^ere refilled and lanterns trimmed again, 
 
 And so the festival went on. At last, 
 
 Slow yielding to their prayers, the stranger came, 
 
 Hiding her burning face behind her lute ; 
 
 And twice her hand essayed the strings, and twice 
 
 She faltered in her task ; then tenderly. 
 
 As for an old sad tale of hopeless years,
 
 THE LUTE GIRL 77 
 
 With drooping head and fingers deft she poured 
 
 Her soul forth into melodies. Now slow 
 
 The plectrum led to prayer the cloistered chords, 
 
 Now loudly with the crash of falling rain, 
 
 Now soft as the leaf whispering of words, 
 
 Now loud and soft together as the long 
 
 Patter of pearls and seed-pearls on a dish 
 
 Of marble ; liquid now as from the bush 
 
 Warbles the mango bird ; meandering 
 
 Now as the streamlet seawards ; voiceless now 
 
 As the wild torrent in the strangling arms 
 
 Of her ice-lover, lying motionless, 
 
 Lulled in a passion far too deep for sound. 
 
 Then as the water from the broken vase 
 
 Gushes, or on the mailed horseman falls 
 
 The anvil din of steel, as on the silk 
 
 The slash of rending, so upon the strings 
 
 Her plectrum fell. . . . 
 
 Then silence over us. 
 No sound broke the charmed air. The autumn 
 
 moon 
 Swam silver o'er the tide, as with a sigh 
 The stranger stirred to go. 
 
 " I passed," said she, 
 " My childhood in the capital ; my home 
 Was near the hills. A girl of twelve, I learnt 
 The magic of the lute, the passionate 
 Blending of lute and voice that drew the souls 
 Of the great masters to acknowledgment ; 
 And lovely women, envious of my face,
 
 78 PO CHU-I 
 
 Bowed at the shrine in secret. The young lords 
 Vied for a look's approval. One brief song 
 Brought many costly bales. Gold ornaments 
 And silver pins were smashed and trodden down, 
 And blood-red silken skirts were stained with wine 
 In oft-times echoing applause. And so 
 I laughed my life away from year to year 
 Wliile the spring breezes and the autumn moon 
 Caressed my careless head. Then on a day 
 My brother sought the battles in Kansuh ; 
 My mother died : nights passed and mornings 
 
 came, 
 And with them waned my beauty. Now no more 
 My doors were thronged ; few were the cavaliers 
 That lingered by my side ; so I became 
 A trader's wife, the chattel of a slave 
 Whose lord was gold, who, parting, little recked 
 Of separation and the unhonoured bride. 
 Since the tenth moon was full my husband went 
 To where the tea-fields ripen. I remained, 
 To wander in my Httle lonely boat 
 Over the cold bright wave o' nights, and dream 
 Of the dead days, the haze of happy days. 
 And see them set again in dreams and tears." 
 
 Already the sweet sorrows of her lute 
 Had moved my soul to pity ; now these words 
 Pierced me the heart. " lady fair," I cried, 
 ** We are the vagrants of the world, and need
 
 THE LUTE GIRL 79 
 
 No ceremony to be friends. Last year 
 
 I left the Imperial City, banished far 
 
 To this plague-stricken spot, where desolatiop 
 
 Broods on from year to heavy year, nor lute 
 
 Nor love's guitar is heard. By marshy bank 
 
 Girt with tall yellow reeds and dwarf bamboos 
 
 I dwell. Night long and day no stir, no sound, 
 
 Only the lurking cuckoo's blood-stained note. 
 
 The gibbon's mournful wail. Hill songs I have, 
 
 And village pipes with their discordant twang. 
 
 But now I listen to thy lute methinks 
 
 The gods were parents to thy music. Sit 
 
 And sing to us again, while I engrave 
 
 Thy story on my tablets ! " Gratefully 
 
 (For long she had been standing) the lute girl 
 
 Sat down and passed into another song. 
 
 Sad and so soft, a dream, unlike the song 
 
 Of now ago. Then all her hearers wept 
 
 In sorrow unrestrained ; and I the more, 
 
 Weeping until the pale chrysanthemums 
 
 Upon my darkened robe were starred with dew. 
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 
 
 I have already alluded to the story of the Emperor Ming 
 Huang and the lady Yang Kwei-fei, or T'ai Chen, as she is 
 called, in my introduction. In order that the events which 
 led up to her tragic death may be understood, I have given
 
 80 PO CHU-I 
 
 in front of the poem a short extract from the old Chines* 
 annals translated into French by the Jesuit Father Joseph 
 de Mailla in 1778. The Emperor is fleeing with a small, 
 ill-disciplined force before the rebelhous general An Lu-shan 
 into the province of Ssiich'uan. So the bald narrative 
 resumes : 
 
 As the Emperor was followed by a numerous suite, and 
 because time was lacking, the arrangements for so long a journey 
 were found to be insuffLcieni. On their arrival at Ma-wei 
 both officers and men murmured lou(Hy against Yang Kuo- 
 chung,^ accusing him of having brought all the present evils 
 upon them. The ambassador of the King of Tibet, followed 
 by twenty retainers, seeing the Prime Minister pass, stopped 
 him, and asked for provisions. Then the soldiers cried out 
 that Yang u>as conspiring with the strangers, and throwing 
 themselves upon him, they cut off his head, which they exposed 
 on a stake to the public gaze. The Emperor, becoming aware 
 of this violence, did not, however, dare to exact punishment. 
 He sent an officer to the chief of those who liad slain the Prime 
 Minister, to find out the reason for their deed ; he replied that 
 they had done so because Yang was on the point of rebellion. 
 The leader of the revolt even demanded the instant execution 
 of the lady T'ai Chen, as she was the sister of the supposed rebel, 
 Yang. The Emperor, who loved her, desired to prove her 
 innocence by showing that it was impossible for her, living 
 always as she did within the Palace precincts, to be confederate 
 to her brother's plot. His envoy, however, urged him that 
 it was politic, after the events he had witnessed, to sacrifi/x 
 her, innocent as she was, if he wished to escape from the dangers 
 of (another) revolution. The Emperor, yielding to political 
 necessity, gave her into the hands of the envoy with the ordtr 
 that she should be strangled. 
 
 1 Minister of State, brother to T'ai Chin.
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 81 
 
 Ennui 
 
 Tired of pale languors and the painted smile, 
 ffis Majesty the Son of Heaven, long time 
 A slave of beauty, ardently desired 
 The glance that brings an Empire's overthrow. 
 
 Beauty 
 
 From the Yang family a maiden came, 
 Glowing to womanhood a rose aflame, 
 Reared in the inner sanctuary apart. 
 Lost to the world, resistless to the heart ; 
 For beauty such as hers was hard to hide. 
 And so, when summoned to the monarch's side, 
 Her flashing eye and merry laugh had power 
 To charm into pure gold the leaden hour ; 
 And through the paint and powder of the court 
 All gathered to the sunshine that she brought. 
 In spring, by the Imperial command. 
 The waters of Hua'ch'ing beheld her stand. 
 Laving her body in the crystal wave 
 Whose dimpled fount a warmth perennial gave. 
 Then when, her girls attending, forth she came, 
 A reed in motion and a rose in flame, 
 An empire passed into a maid's control. 
 And with her eyes she won a monarch's soul. 
 
 Revelry 
 
 Hair of cloud o'er face of flower, 
 Nodding plumes where she alights, 
 

 
 82 PO CHIJ-I 
 
 In the white hibiscus bower 
 She Hngers through the soft spring nights- 
 Nights too short, though wearing late 
 Till the mimosa days are born. 
 Never more affairs of State 
 Wake them in the early morn. 
 Wine-stained moments on the wing, 
 MoonHt hours go luting by, 
 She who leads the flight of Spring 
 Leads the midnight revehy. 
 Flawless beauties, thousands three. 
 Deck the Imperial harem, 
 Yet the monarch's eyes may see 
 Only one, and one supreme. 
 Goddess in a golden hall, 
 Fairest maids around her gleam, 
 Wine-fumes of the festival 
 Daily waft her into dream. 
 Smiles she, and her sires are lords, 
 Noble rank her brothers win : 
 Ah, the ominous awards 
 Showered upon her kith and kin ! 
 For throughout the land there runs 
 Thought of peril, thought of fire ; 
 Men rejoice not in their sons 
 Daughters are their sole desire. 
 In the gorgeous palaces, 
 Piercing the grey skies above, 
 
 ' Pronounced hareem.
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 83 
 
 Music on the languid breeze 
 Draws the dreaming world to love. 
 Song and dance and hands that sway 
 The passion of a thousand lyres 
 Ever through the Hve-long day, 
 And the monarch never tires. 
 Sudden comes the answer curt, 
 Loud the fish-skin war-drums roar ; 
 Cease the plaintive " rainbow skirt " : 
 Death is drumming at the door. 
 
 Flight 
 
 Clouds upon clouds of dust enveloping 
 The lofty gates of the proud capital. 
 On, on, to the south-west, a Uving wall, 
 Ten thousand battle-chariots on the wing. 
 
 Feathers and jewels flashing through the cloud 
 Onwards, and then an halt. The legions wait 
 A hundred H beyond the western gate ; 
 The great walls loom behind them wrapt in cloud. 
 
 No further stirs the sullen soldiery. 
 Naught but the last dread office can avail, 
 Till she of the dark moth-eyebrows, Uly pale, 
 Shines through tall avenues of spears to die.
 
 84 PO CHU-I 
 
 Upon the ground lie ornaments of gold, 
 One with the dust, and none to gather them, 
 Hair-pins of jade and many a costly gem, 
 Kingfishers' wings and golden birds scarce oold. 
 
 The king has sought the darkness of his hands. 
 Veiling the eyes that looked for help in vain, 
 And as he turns to gaze upon the slain. 
 His tears, her blood, are mingled on the sands 
 
 Exile 
 
 Across great plains of yellow sand, 
 
 Where the whisthng winds are blown, 
 
 Over the cloud-topped mountain peaks, 
 They wend their way alone. 
 
 Few are the pilgrims that attain 
 
 Mount Omi's heights afar ; 
 And the bright gleam of their standard grows 
 
 Faint as the last pale star. 
 
 Dark the Ssiich'uan waters loom, 
 
 Dark the Ssiich'uan hills. 
 And day and night the monarch's life 
 
 An endless sorrow fills. 
 
 The brightness of the foreign moon 
 
 Saddens his lonely heart ; 
 And a sound of a bell in the evening rain 
 
 Doth rend his soul apart.
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 85 
 
 Return 
 
 The days go by, and once again, 
 Among the shadows of his pain, 
 He Hngers at the well-known place 
 That holds the memory of her face. 
 
 But from the clouds of earth that lie 
 Beneath the foot of tall Ma-wei 
 No signs of her dim form appear, 
 Only the place of death is here. 
 
 Statesman's and monarch's eyes have met, 
 And royal robes with tears are wet ; 
 Then eastward flies the frantic steed 
 As on to the Red Wall they speed. 
 
 Home 
 
 There is the pool, the flowers as of old, 
 There the hibiscus at the gates of gold. 
 And there the willows round the palace rise. 
 In the hibiscus flower he sees her face, 
 Her eyebrows in the willow he can trace, 
 And silken pansies thrill him with her eyes. 
 
 How in this presence should his tears not come, 
 In spring amid the bloom of peach and plum,
 
 86 PO CHU-I 
 
 In autumn rains when the wut*ung leaves must 
 
 fall? 
 South of the western palace many trees 
 Shower their dead leaves upon the terraces, 
 And not a hand to stir their crimson pall. 
 
 Ye minstrels of the Garden of the Pear/ 
 
 Grief with the touch of age has blanched your 
 
 hair. 
 Ye guardians of the Pepper Chamber,* now 
 No longer young to him, the firefly flits 
 Through the black hall where, lost to love, he sits, 
 Folding the veil of sorrows round his brow, 
 
 Alone, and one by one the lanterns die. 
 Sleep with the lily hands has passed him by, 
 Slowly the watches of the night are gone, 
 For now, alas ! the nights are all too long. 
 And shine the stars, a silver, mocking throng. 
 As though the dawn were dead or slumbered on. 
 
 Cold settles on the painted duck and drake, 
 The frost a ghostly tapestry doth make, 
 Chill the kingflsher's quilt with none to share. 
 Parted by life and death ; the ebb and flow 
 Of night and day over his spirit go ; 
 He hunts her face in dreams, and finds despair. 
 
 ^ The Pear Garden was a college of music founded by Ming 
 Huang for the purpose of training the youth of both sexes. 
 ' The women's part of the palace.
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 87 
 
 Spirit-Land 
 
 A priest of Tao, one of the Hung-tu school, 
 
 Was able by his magic to compel 
 
 The spirits of the dead. So to reHeve 
 
 The sorrows of his king, the man of Tao 
 
 Receives an urgent summons. Borne aloft 
 
 Upon the clouds, on ether charioted, 
 
 He flies with speed of lightning. High to heaven, 
 
 Low down to earth, he, seeking everywhere, 
 
 Floats on the far empyrean, and below 
 
 The yellow springs ; but nowhere in great space 
 
 Can he find aught of her. At length he hears 
 
 An old-world tale : an Island of the Blest ' 
 
 So runs the legend in mid-ocean lies 
 
 In realms of blue vacuity, too faint 
 
 To be descried ; there gaily coloured towers 
 
 Rise up hke rainbow clouds, and many gentle 
 
 And beautiful Immortals pass their days 
 
 In peace. Among them there is one whose name 
 
 Sounds upon lips as Eternal. By the bloom 
 
 Of her white skin and flower-hke face he knows 
 
 That this is she. Knocking at the jade door 
 
 At the western gate of the golden house, ho bids 
 
 A fair maid breathe his name to one more fair 
 
 Than all. She, hearing of this embassy 
 
 Sent by the Son of Heaven, starts from her dreama 
 
 Among the tapestry curtains. Gathering 
 
 1 The fabled Island of P'ng!ai.
 
 88 PO CHU-I 
 
 Her robes around her, letting the pillow fall, 
 She, risen in haste, begins to deck herself 
 With pearls and gems. Her cloud-hke hair, dis- 
 hevelled, 
 Betrays the nearness of her sleep. And with the 
 
 droop 
 Of her flowery plumes in disarray, she floats 
 Light through the hall. The sleeves of her divine 
 Raiment the breezes fill. As once again 
 To the Rainbow Skirt and Feather Jacket air 
 She seems to dance, her face is fixed and calm, 
 Though many tear-drops on an almond bough 
 Fall, and recall the rains of spring. Subdued 
 Her wild emotions and restrained her grief, 
 She tenders thanks unto his Majesty, 
 Saying how since they parted she has missed 
 His form and voice ; how, though their love had 
 
 reached 
 Too soon its earthly limit, yet among 
 The blest a multitude of mellow noons 
 Remain ungathered. Turning now, she leans 
 Toward the land of the Hving, and in vain 
 Would find the Imperial city, lost in the dust 
 And haze. Then raising from their lacquered 
 
 gloom 
 Old keepsakes, tokens of undying love, 
 A golden hair-pin, an enamel brooch. 
 She bids him bear them to her lord. One-half 
 The hair-pin still she keeps, one-half the brooch, 
 Breaking with her dim hands the yellow gold,
 
 THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG 89 
 
 Sundering the enamel. " Tell my lord," 
 She murmured, " to be firm of heart as this 
 Gold and enamel ; then, in heaven or earth. 
 Below, we twain may meet once more." At 
 
 parting 
 She gave a thousand messages of love. 
 Among the rest recalled a mutual pledge, 
 How on the seventh day of the seventh moon, 
 Within the Hall of Immortality 
 At midnight, whispering, when none were near, 
 Low in her ear, he breathed, " I swear that we, 
 Like to the one-winged birds, will ever fly, 
 Or grow united as the tree whose boughs 
 Are interwoven. Heaven and earth shall fall, 
 Long lasting as they are. But this great wrong 
 Shall stretch from end to end the universe, 
 And shine beyond the ruin of the stars." 
 
 THE RIVER AND THE LEAP 
 
 Into the night the sounds of luting flow ; 
 The west wind stirs amid the root-crop blue ; 
 While envious fireflies spoil the twinkhng dew, 
 And early wild-geese stem the dark Kin-ho. 
 
 Now great trees tell their secrets to the sky. 
 And hill on hill looms in the moon-clear night. 
 I watch one leaf upon the river light. 
 And in a dream go drifting down the Hwai.
 
 00 PO CHU-I 
 
 LAKE SHANQ 
 
 Oh ! she is like a picture in the spring, 
 
 This lake of Shang, with the wild hills gathering 
 
 Into a winding garden at the base 
 
 Of stormless waters ; pines, deep blue, enlace 
 
 The lessening slopes, and broken moonlight 
 
 gleams 
 Across the waves hke pearls we thread in 
 
 dreams. 
 Like a woof of jasper strands the corn unfolds, 
 Field upon field beyond the quiet wolds ; 
 The late-blown rush flaunts in the dusk serene 
 Her netted sash and slender skirt of green. 
 Sadly I turn my prow toward the shore. 
 The dream behind me and the world before. 
 Lake of Shang, his feet may wander far 
 Whose soul thou boldest mirrored as a star. 
 
 THE RUINED HOME 
 
 Who was the far-off founder of the house, 
 With its red gates abutting to the road ? 
 A palace, though its outer wings are shorn, 
 And domes of ghttering tiles. The wall without 
 Has tottered into ruin, yet remain 
 The straggHng fragments of some seven courts, 
 The wreck of seven fortunes : roof and eaves 
 Still hang together. From this chamber cool
 
 THE RUINED HOME 91 
 
 The dense blue smoke arose. Nor heat nor 
 
 cold 
 Now dwells therein. A tall paviHon stands 
 Empty beside the empty rooms that face 
 The pine-browed southern hills. Long purple 
 
 vines 
 Frame the verandahs. 
 
 Mount the sunken step 
 Of the red, joyous threshold, and shake down 
 The peach and cherry branches. Yonder group 
 Of scarlet peonies hath ringed about 
 A lordly fellow with ten witnesses 
 Of his official rank. The taint of meat 
 Lingers around the kitchen, and a trace 
 Of vanished hoards the treasury retains. 
 
 Who can lay hold upon my words ? Give heed 
 And commune with thyself ! How poor and 
 
 mean 
 Is the last state of wretchedness, when cold 
 And famine thunder at the gates, and none 
 But pale endurance on the threshold stands 
 With helpless hands and hollow eyes, the dumb 
 Beholder of calamity. thou 
 That would protect the land a thousand years, 
 Behold they are not that herein once bloomed 
 And perished ; but the garden breathes of them, 
 And all the flowers are fragrant for their sakes. 
 Salute the garden that salutes the dead !
 
 92 PO CHU-I 
 
 A PALACE STOBY 
 
 A network handkerchief contains no tear. 
 'Tis dawn at court ere wine and music sate. 
 The rich red crops no aftermath await. 
 Rest on a screen, and you will fall, I fear. 
 
 PEACEFUL OLD AGE 
 
 Chuang Tzu said : " Tao ^ gives me this toil in manhood, 
 this repose in old age, this rest in death." 
 
 Swiftly and soon the golden sun goes down, 
 The blue sky wells afar into the night. 
 Tao is the changeful world's environment ; 
 Happy are they that in its laws dehght. 
 
 Tao gives me toil, youth's passion to achieve, 
 And leisure in life's autumn and decay. 
 I follow Tao the seasons are my friends ; 
 Opposing it misfortunes come my way. 
 
 Within my breast no sorrows can abide ; 
 
 I feel the great world's spirit through me thrill. 
 
 And as a cloud I drift before the wind. 
 
 Or with the random swallow take my will. 
 
 Literally, " The Way."
 
 PEACEFUL OLD AGE 93 
 
 As underneath the mulberry-tree I dream, 
 The water-clock drips on, and dawn appears : 
 A new day shines on wrinkles and white hair. 
 The symbols of the fulness of my years. 
 
 If I depart, I cast no look behind : 
 Still wed to hfe, I still am free from care. 
 Since life and death in cycles come and go, 
 Of little moment are the days to spare. 
 
 Thus strong in faith I wait, and long to be 
 One with the pulsings of Eternity. 
 
 SLEEPLESSNESS 
 
 I cannot rest when the cool is gone from June, 
 But haunt the dim verandah till the moon 
 
 Fades from the dawn's pursuit. 
 The stirrup-fires beneath the terrace flare ; 
 Over the star-domed court a low, sad air 
 
 Roams from a hidden lute. 
 
 This endless heat doth urge me to extremes ; 
 Yet cool of autumn waits till the wild goose 
 screams 
 
 In the track of whirling skies. 
 My hand is laid upon the cup once more, 
 And of the red-gold vintage I implore 
 The sleep that night denies.
 
 94 PO CHU-I 
 
 THE GRASS 
 
 How beautiful and fresh the grass returns ! 
 When golden days decline, the meadow burns ; 
 Yet autumn suns no hidden root have slain, 
 The spring winds blow, and there is grass again. 
 
 Green rioting on olden ways it falls : 
 The blue sky storms the ruined city walls ; 
 Yet since Wang Sun departed long ago, 
 When the grass blooms both joy and fear I 
 know. 
 
 AUTUMN ACROSS THE FRONTIER 
 
 The last red leaves droop sadly o'er the slain ; 
 In the long tower my cup of wine I drain. 
 Watching the mist-flocks driven through the 
 
 hills, 
 And great blown roses ravished by the rain. 
 
 The beach tints hnger down the frontier line. 
 And sounding waters shimmer to the brine ; 
 Over the Yellow Kingdom breaks the sun. 
 Yet dreams, and woodlands, and the chase are 
 mine.
 
 THE FLOWER FAIR 
 
 THE FLOWER FAIR 
 
 The city walls rise up to greet 
 
 Spring's luminous twilight hours ; 
 The clamour of carts goes down the street 
 
 This is the Fair of Flowers. 
 Leisure and pleasure drift along, 
 Beggar and marquis join the throng, 
 And care, humility, rank, and pride 
 In the sight of the flowers are laid aside. 
 Bright, oh ! bright are a thousand shades, 
 Crimson splashes and slender blades 
 
 With five white fillets bound. 
 Tents are here that will cover all, 
 Ringed with trelhs and leafy wall, 
 
 And the dust is laid around. 
 Naught but hfe doth here display ; 
 The djdng flower is cast away ; 
 Families meet and intermingle. 
 Lovers are parted, and friends go single. 
 
 One ambition all avow 
 A roof to harbour, a field to plough* 
 See, they come to the Flower Fair, 
 Youth and maiden, a laughing pair. 
 Bowed and sighing the greybeard wends 
 Alone to the mart where sighing ends. 
 For here is a burden all may bear, 
 The crimson and gold of the Flower Fair.
 
 9d PO CHU-I 
 
 THE PENALTIES OF RANK 
 
 Three score and ten ! A slave to office yet ! 
 In the Li Chi these luminous words befall : 
 " The lust for honours honoars not at all," 
 Here is the golden Hne we most forget. 
 
 Alas ! how these long years afflict a man ! 
 When teeth are gone, and failing eyes grow dim. 
 The morning dews brought dreams of fame to him 
 Who bears in dusk the burdens of his clan. 
 
 His eyes still hnger on the tassel blue, 
 And still the red sedan of rank appeals. 
 But his shrunk belly scarce the girdle feels 
 As, bowed, he crawls the Prince's Gateway 
 through. 
 
 Where is the man that would not wealth acclaim ? 
 Who would not truckle for his sovereign's grace ? 
 Yet years of high renown their furrows trace. 
 And greatness overwhelms the weary frame. 
 
 The springs of laughter flow not from his heart. 
 Where bide the dust and glamour of old days. 
 Who walks alone in contemplation's ways ? 
 ^Tis he, the happy man, who dwells apart.
 
 THE ISLAND OF PINES 97 
 
 THE ISLAND OF PINES 
 
 Across the willow-lake a temple shines, 
 Pale, through the lotus-girdled isle of pines, 
 And twilight Hstens to the drip of oars 
 The coming of dark boats with scented stores 
 Of orange seed ; the mist leans from the hill, 
 While palm leaves sway 'twixt wind and water 
 
 chill, 
 And waves of smoke like phantoms rise and 
 
 fade 
 Into a trembling tangle of green jade. 
 I dream strange dreams within my tower room, 
 Dreams from the ghmmering realms of even 
 
 gloom ; 
 Until each princely guest doth, landing, raise 
 His eyes, upon the full-orbed moon to gaze 
 The old moon-palace that in ocean stands 
 Mid clouds of thistle-down and jewelled strands. 
 
 SPRINGTIDE 
 
 The lonely convent on the hill 
 
 Draws merchants faring from the west ; 
 
 Almost upon the waters still 
 
 The quiet clouds lean down and rest. 
 
 7
 
 98 PO CHIJ-I 
 
 In green pavilions of warm trees 
 The golden builders toil and sing ; 
 While swallows dip along the leas, 
 And dabble in the ooze of Spring. 
 
 A thousand flowers, a thousand dreams, 
 Bright pageants in confusion pass. 
 See yonder, where the white horse gleams 
 His fetlocks deep in pHant grass. 
 
 Beside the eastern lake there calls 
 No laughing throng, no lover goes ; 
 But in the long embankment walls 
 The willow shade invites repose. 
 
 THE ANCIENT WIND 
 
 The peach blooms open on the eastern wall 
 I breathe their fragrance, laughing in the glow 
 Of golden noontide. Suddenly there comes 
 The revelation of the ancient wind, 
 Flooding my soul with glory ; till I feel 
 One with the brightness of the first far dawn, 
 One with the many-coloured spring ; and all 
 The secrets of the scented hearts of flowers 
 Are whispered through me ; till I cry aloud : 
 " Alas 1 how grey and scentless is the bloom 
 Of mortal life ! " This this alone I fear,
 
 THE ANCIENT WIND 99 
 
 That from yon twinkling mirror of delight 
 
 The unreal flowers may fade ; that with the breath 
 
 Of the fiery flying Dragon they will fall 
 
 Petal by petal, slowly, yet too soon, 
 
 Into the world's green sepulchre. Alas ! 
 
 My Httle friends, my lovers, we must part. 
 
 And, like some uncompanioned pine that stands, 
 
 Last of the legions on the southern slopes, 
 
 I too shall stand alone, and hungry winds 
 
 Shall gnaw the lute-strings of my desolate heart.
 
 LI HUA 
 
 CIRCA A.D. 850 
 AN OLD BATTLE-FIELD 
 
 Vast, vast an endless wilderness of sand ; 
 
 A stream crawls through its tawny banks ; the 
 
 hills 
 Encompass it ; where in the dismal dusk 
 Moan the last sighs of sunset. Shrubs are gone, 
 Withered the grass ; all chill as the white rime 
 Of early morn. The birds go soaring past, 
 The beasts avoid it ; for the legend runs 
 Told by the crook'd custodian of the place 
 Of some old battle-field. " Here many a time," 
 He quavered, " armies have been overwhelmed, 
 And the faint voices of the unresting dead 
 Often upon the darkness of the night 
 Go wailing by." 
 
 O sorrow ! O ye Ch'ins I 
 Ye Hans ! ye dynasties for ever flown ! 
 Ye empires of the dust ! for I have heard 
 How, when the Ch'is and Weis embattled rosa 
 
 100
 
 AN OLD BATTLE-FIELD 101 
 
 Along the frontier, when the Chings and Hans 
 Gathered their multitudes, a myriad leagues 
 Of utter weariness they trod. By day 
 Grazing their jaded steeds, by night they ford 
 The hostile stream. The endless earth below, 
 The boundless sky above, they know no day 
 Of their return. Their breasts are ever bared 
 To the pitiless steel and all the wounds of war 
 Unspeakable. 
 
 Methinks I see them now. 
 Dust-mantled in the bitter wind, a host 
 Of Tartar warriors in ambuscade. 
 Our leader scorns the foe. He would give battle 
 Upon the threshold of the camp. The stream 
 Besets a grim array where order reigns. 
 Though many hearts may beat, where discipline 
 Is all, and Hfe of no account. 
 
 The spear 
 Now works its iron will, the startled sand 
 BHnding the combatants together locked 
 In the death-grip ; while hill and vale and stream 
 Glow with the flash and crash of arms. Then cold 
 The shades of night o'erwhelm them ; to the knee 
 In snow, beards stiff with ice. The carrion bird 
 Hath sought its nest. The war-horse in its 
 
 strength 
 Is broken. Clothes avail not. Hands are dead, 
 Flesh to the frost succumbs. Nature herself 
 Doth aid the Tartar with a deadly blast 
 Following the wild onslaught. Wagons block
 
 102 U HUA 
 
 The way. Our men, beset with flank attacks, 
 Surrender with their officers. Their chief 
 Is slain. The river to its topmost banks 
 Swollen with death ; the dykes of the Great Wall 
 Brimming with blood. Nation and rank are lost 
 In that vast-Tieaped corruption. 
 
 Faintly now, 
 And fainter beats the drum ; for strength is shorn, 
 And arrows spent, and bow-strings snapped, and 
 
 swords 
 Shattered. The legions fall on one another 
 In the last surge of life and death. To yield 
 Is to become a slave ; to fight is but 
 To mingle with the desert sands. 
 
 No sound 
 Of bird now flutters from the hushed hillside ; 
 All, all is still, save for the wind that wails 
 And whistles through the long night where the 
 
 ghosts 
 Hither and thither in the gloom go by. 
 And spirits from the nether world arise 
 Under the ominous clouds. The sunlight pales 
 Athwart the trampled grass ; the fading moon 
 Still twinkles on the frost-flakes scattered round.
 
 SSU-K'UNG T'U 
 
 A.D. 834-908 
 
 LrrTLE is known of his life, except that he was Secretary 
 to the Board of Rites and retired from this position to lead 
 the contemplative life. His introduction to the European 
 world is entirely due to Professor Giles. No mention is 
 made of him in the French collection of the T'ang poets 
 by the Marquis de Saint-Denys. Yet the importance of his 
 work cannot well be over-estimated. He is perhaps the 
 most Chiuese of the poets dealt with, and certainly one of 
 the most philosophical. By his subtly simple method of 
 treatment, lofty themes are clothed in the bright raiment 
 of poetry. If through the red pine woods, or amid the torrent 
 of peach-blossom rushing down the valley, some mortal 
 beauty strays, she is but a symbol, a lure that leads us by 
 way of the particular into the universal. Whatever senses 
 we possess may be used as means of escape from the prison 
 of personality into the boundless freedom of the spiritual 
 world. And once the soul is set free, there is no need for 
 painful aimless wanderings, no need for Mahomet to go to 
 the Mountain, for resting in the centre of all things the 
 imiverse will be our home and our share in the secrets of 
 the World-Builder will be made known. 
 
 Freighted with eternal principles 
 
 Athwart the night's void. 
 
 Where cloud masses darken. 
 
 And the wind blows ceaseless around, 
 
 108
 
 104 SSU-K'UNG T'U 
 
 Beyond the range of conceptions 
 Let us gain the Centre, 
 And there hold fast without violence. 
 Fed from an inexhaiistible supply.^ 
 
 With such a philosophy there are infinite possibilities. 
 The poet is an occultist in the truest sense of the word. 
 For him, Time and Space no longer exist, and by " concen- 
 tration " he is able to communicate with the beloved, and 
 
 Sweet words falter to and fro 
 Though the great River rolls between. 
 
 Ssii-K'ung T'u, more than any poet, teaches how unreal 
 are the apparent limitations of man. " He is the peer of 
 heaven and earth " ; " A co-worker in Divine transformation." 
 With his keen vision the poet sees things in a glance and 
 paints them in a single line, and in the poem as a whole you 
 get the sense of beauty beyond beauty, as though the seer 
 had looked into a world that underlay the world of form. 
 And yet there is nothing strained, no peering through tele- 
 scopes to find new worlds or magnify the old ; the eyes need 
 only be lifted for a moment, and the great power is not the 
 power of sight, but sympathy. 
 
 And Nature, ever prodigal to her lovers, repays their favours 
 in full measure. To this old artist-lover she grants no petty 
 details, no chance revelations of this or that sweetness and 
 quality but her whole pure self. Yet such a gift is illimitable ; 
 he may only win from secret to secret and die unsatisfied. 
 
 You grasp ten thousand, and secure one. 
 
 This might well be written over his tomb, if any verse were 
 needed to encompass him. By entering into harmony with 
 
 ^ Chinese Literature, p. 179.
 
 RETURN OF SPRING 105 
 
 his environment, Ssii-K'ung T'u allowed his splendid vitality 
 to find expression, and after the lapse of a thousand years 
 these glowing pages torn from the book of life have drifted 
 towards us Uke rose-leaves down a sombre stream. 
 
 EETUEN OP SPRING 
 
 A lovely maiden, roaming 
 
 The wild dark valley through, 
 Culls from the shining waters 
 
 Lilies and lotus blue. 
 With leaves the peach-trees are laden. 
 
 The wind sighs through the haze, 
 And the wiUows wave their shadows 
 
 Down the oriole-haunted ways. 
 As, passion- tranced, I follow, 
 
 I hear the old refrain 
 Of Spring's eternal story. 
 
 That was old and is young again. 
 
 THE COLOUR OF LIFE 
 
 Would that we might for ever stay 
 The rainbow glories of the world, 
 The blue of the unfathomed sea. 
 The rare azalea late unfurled. 
 The parrot of a greener spring. 
 The willows and the terrace line,
 
 106 SSU-K'UNG T'U 
 
 The stranger from the night-steeped hills, 
 The roselit brimming cup of wine. 
 Oh for a Hfe that stretched afar, 
 Where no dead dust of books were rife, 
 Where spring sang clear from star to star ; 
 Alas ! what hope for such a Hfe 2 
 
 SET FREE 
 
 I revel in flowers without let, 
 An atom at random in space ; 
 My soul dwells in regions ethereal. 
 And the world is my dreaming-place. 
 
 As the tops of the ocean I tower. 
 
 As the winds of the air spreading wide, 
 
 I am 'stablished in might and dominion and power, 
 
 With the universe ranged at my side. 
 
 Before me the sun, moon, and stars, 
 Behind me the phoenix doth clang ; 
 In the morning I lash my leviathans. 
 And I bathe my feet in Fusang. 
 
 FASCINATION 
 
 Fair is the pine grove and the mountain stream 
 That gathers to the valley far below,
 
 FASCINATION 107 
 
 The black-winged junks on the dim sea reach, 
 
 adream, 
 The pale blue firmament o'er banks of snow. 
 And her, more fair, more supple smooth than jade, 
 Gleaming among the dark red woods I follow : 
 Now lingering, now as a bird afraid 
 Of pirate wings she seeks the haven hollow. 
 Vague, and beyond the daylight of recall, 
 Into the cloudland past my spirit flies, 
 As though before the gold of autumn's fall, 
 Before the glow of the moon-flooded skies. 
 
 TRANQUIL REPOSE 
 
 It dwells in the quiet silence, 
 
 Unseen upon hill and plain, 
 'Tis lapped by the tideless harmonies, 
 
 It soars with the lonely crane. 
 
 As the springtime breeze whose flutter 
 
 The silken skirts hath blown, 
 As the wind-drawn note of the bamboo flute 
 
 Whose charm we would make our own, 
 
 Chance-met, it seems to surrender ; 
 
 Sought, and it lures us on ; 
 Ever shifting in form and fantasy, 
 
 It eludes us, and is gone.
 
 108 SSU-K'UNG T'U 
 
 THE POET S VISION 
 
 Wine that recalls the glow of spring, 
 
 Upon the thatch a sudden shower, 
 
 A gentle scholar in the bower, 
 
 Where tall bamboos their shadows fling, 
 
 White clouds in heavens newly clear. 
 
 And wandering wings through depths of trees, 
 
 Then pillowed in green shade, he sees 
 
 A torrent foaming to the mere ; 
 
 Around his dreams the dead leaves fall ; 
 
 Calm as the starred chrysanthemum. 
 
 He notes the season glories come, 
 
 And reads the books that never pall. 
 
 DESPONDENT 
 
 A gale goes ruffling down the stream. 
 The giants of the forest crack ; 
 My thoughts are bitter black as death- 
 For she, my summer, comes not back. 
 
 A hundred years hke water glide, 
 Riches and rank are ashen cold. 
 Daily the dream of peace recedes : 
 By whom shall Sorrow be consoled ?
 
 DESPONDENT 109 
 
 The soldier, dauntless, draws his sword, 
 And there are tears and endless pain ; 
 The winds arise, leaves flutter down, 
 And through the old thatch drips the rain. 
 
 EMBROIDERIES 
 
 If rank and wealth within the mind abide, 
 Then gilded dust is all your yellow gold. 
 Kings in their fretted palaces grow old ; 
 Youth dwells for ever at Contentment's side. 
 A mist cloud hanging at the river's brim, 
 Pink almond flowers along the purple bough, 
 A hut rose-girdled under moon-swept skies, 
 A painted bridge half-seen in shadows dim, 
 These are the splendours of the poor, and thou, 
 wine of spring, the vintage of the wise. 
 
 CONCENTRATION 
 
 A hut green-shadowed among firs, 
 A sun that slopes in amber air, 
 Lone wandering, my head I bare, 
 While some far thrush the silence stirs. 
 
 No flocks of wild geese thither fly. 
 And she ah ! she is far away ; 
 Yet all my thoughts behold her stay, 
 As in the golden hours gone by.
 
 110 SSU-K'UNG T'U 
 
 The clouds scarce dim the water's sheen, 
 The moon-bathed islands wanly show, 
 And sweet words falter to and fro 
 Though the great River rolls between. 
 
 MOTION 
 
 Like a water-wheel awhirl, 
 
 Like the rolHng of a pearl ; 
 Yet these but illustrate, 
 To fools, the final state. 
 The earth's great axis spinning on, 
 The never-resting pole of sky 
 Let us resolve their Whence and Why, 
 And blend with all things into One ; 
 Beyond the bounds of thought and dream, 
 Circling the vasty void as spheres 
 Whose orbits round a thousand years : 
 Behold the Key that fits my theme.
 
 OU-YANa HSIU OF LU-LING 
 
 A.D. 1007-1072 
 
 With the completion of the T'ang dynasty, it was my 
 design to bring this work to conclusion. I have, however, 
 decided to include Ou-Yang Hsiu of the Sung dynasty, if 
 only for the sake of his " Autumn," which many competent 
 critics hold to be one of the finest things in Chinese literature. 
 His career was as varied as his talents. In collaboration 
 with the historian Sung Chi he prepared a history of the 
 recent T'ang dynasty. He also held the important post of 
 Grand Examiner, and was at one time appointed a Governor 
 in the provinces. It la difficult to praise the " Autumn " 
 too highly. With its daring imagery, grave magnificence 
 of language and solemn thought, it is nothing less than 
 Elizabethan, and only the masters of that age could have 
 done it justice in the rendering. 
 
 AUTUMN 
 
 One night, when dreaming over ancient books, 
 There came to me a sudden far-off sound 
 From the south-west. I hstened, wondering, 
 As on it crept : at first a gentle sigh, 
 Like as a spirit passing ; then it swelled 
 Into the roaring of great waves that smile 
 The broken vanguard of the chff : the rage 
 Of storm-black tigers in the startled night 
 Among the jackals of the wind and rain. 
 
 lU
 
 112 OU-YANG HSIU OF LU-LING 
 
 It burst upon the hanging bell, and set 
 
 The silver pendants chattering. It seemed 
 
 A muflfled march of soldiers hurriedly 
 
 Sped to the night attack with muffled mouths, 
 
 When no command is heard, only the tramp 
 
 Of men and horses onward. " Boy," said I, 
 
 "Whatsoundisthat? Goforthandsee." My boy, 
 
 Returning, answered, " Lord ! the moon and all 
 
 Her stars shine fair ; the silver river spans 
 
 The sky. No sound of man is heard without ; 
 
 'Tis but a whisper of the trees." " Alas ! " 
 
 I cried, " then Autumn is upon us now. 
 
 'Tis thus, boy, that Autumn comes, the cold 
 
 Pitiless autumn of the wrack and mist. 
 
 Autumn, the season of the cloudless sky, 
 
 Autumn, of biting blasts, the time of bhght 
 
 And desolation ; following the chill 
 
 Stir of disaster, with a shout it leaps 
 
 Upon us. All the gorgeous pageantry 
 
 Of green is changed. All the proud foliage 
 
 Of the crested forests is shorn, and shrivels down 
 
 Beneath the blade of ice. For this is Autumn, 
 
 Nature's chief executioner. It takes 
 
 The darkness for a symbol. It assumes 
 
 The temper of proven steel. Its symbol is 
 
 A sharpened sword. The avenging fiend, it rides 
 
 Upon an atmosphere of death. As Spring, 
 
 Mother of many-coloured birth, doth rear 
 
 The young Hght-hearted world, so Autumn drains 
 
 The nectar of the world's maturity.
 
 AUTUMN 113 
 
 And sad the hour when all ripe things must pass, 
 
 For sweetness and decay are of one stem, 
 
 And sweetness ever riots to decay. 
 
 Still, what availeth it ? The trees will fall 
 
 In their due season. Sorrow cannot keep 
 
 The plants from fading. Stay ! there yet is man 
 
 Man, the divinest of all things, whose heart 
 
 Hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes, 
 
 Who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies 
 
 Upon the parchment of his brow, whose soul 
 
 Strange cares have lined and interlined, until 
 
 Beneath the burden of life his inmost self 
 
 Bows down. And s\vifter still he seeks decay 
 
 When groping for the unattainable 
 
 Or grieving over continents unknown. 
 
 Then come the snows of time. Are they not due ! 
 
 Is man of adamant he should outlast 
 
 The giants of the grove ? Yet after all 
 
 Who is it saps his strength save man alone ? 
 
 Tell me, boy, by what imagined right 
 
 Man doth accuse his Autumn blast ? " My boy 
 
 Slumbered and answered not. The cricket gave 
 
 The only answer to my song of death. 
 
 AT THE GRAVESIDE 
 
 Years since we last foregathered, Man-ch'ing I 
 
 Methinks I sec thee now, 
 
 Lord of the noble brow, 
 And courage from thy glances challenging. 
 
 8
 
 114 OU-YANG HSIU OF LU-LING 
 
 Ah ! when thy tired Umbs were fain to keep 
 The purple cerements of sleep, 
 
 Thy dim beloved form 
 
 Passed from the sunshine warm, 
 From the corrupting earth, that sought to hold 
 Its beauty, to the essence of pure gold. 
 Or haply art thou some far- towering pine, 
 
 Some rare and wondrous flower ? 
 
 What boots it, this sad hour ? 
 Here in thy loneliness the eglantine 
 Weaves her sweet tapestries above thy head, 
 
 While blow across thy bed, 
 Moist with the dew of heaven, the breezes chill : 
 Fire-fly, will-o'-the-wisp, and wandering star 
 Glow in thy gloom, and naught is heard but the far 
 Chanting of woodman and shepherd from the hill, 
 Naught but the startled bird is seen 
 Soaring away in the moonland sheen, 
 Or the hulk of the scampering beast that fears 
 Their plaintive lays as, to and fro, 
 
 The pallid singers go. 
 Such is thy lonehness. A thousand years, 
 Haply ten thousand, hence the fox shall make 
 His fastness in thy tomb, the weasel take 
 Her young to thy dim sanctuary. Such is the lot 
 For ever of the great and wise, 
 
 Whose tombs around us rise ; 
 Man honours where the grave remembers not. 
 
 Ah ! that a song could bring 
 
 Peace to thy dust, Man-ch'ing !
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 In the ppeparation of this Uttle volume I have drawn largely 
 upon the prose translations of the great English and French 
 pioneers in the field of Chinese literature, notably Professor 
 Giles and the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys. The copy of 
 the latter 's Poesies des Thang which I possess has been at 
 various times the property of William Morris, York Powell, 
 and John Payne, and contains records of all three, and pencil 
 notes of illuminating criticism, for which I believe the trans- 
 lator of The Arabian Nights is mainly responsible. My 
 thanks are due to Mr. Lionel Giles for the translation of Po 
 Chii-i's " Peaceful Old Ago," and for the thorough revision of 
 the Chinese names throughout the book. Mr. Walter Old is 
 also responsible for a few of Po Chii-i's shorter poems here 
 rendered. For the convenience of readers who desire to 
 pursue the subject further, I have appended a short list of 
 the very few books obtainable. In this matter Jlr. A. 
 Probsthain has given me invaluable assistance. 
 
 THE ODES 
 
 The Kino, or Book of Chinese Poetry, being the Collection of 
 Ballads, Sagas, Hymns, etc. , translated by C. E. R. Allen, 1891. 
 
 The best book available on the Odes of Confucius. It con- 
 tains a complete metrical translation. 
 
 The Old Poetrv Classic of the Chinese, a metrical 
 translation by W. Jennings, with notes, 1891. 
 
 The Odes of Confucius, rendered by L. Cranmer-Byng. 
 
 A free metrical rendering in The Wisdom of the East Series. 
 
 The Chinese Text, with French and Latin translations, by 
 S. Couvreur, 1896. 
 
 CH'IJ YUAN 
 
 Ch'u YxJan's Tsoo-Sze Elegies of Cn'tx, in stanzas and 
 linos, edited by Wang Yi, 2nd Century. In Chinese. A reprint, 
 1885. 
 
 The Same Li Sao. Poeme traduit du Chinois par le 
 Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys. Paris, 1870. 
 
 The Same Li Sao. Chinese Text, with English translation 
 and notes by J. Legge. London, 1876. 
 
 115
 
 116 APPENDIX 
 
 THE T'ANG DYNASTY 
 
 Chinkse Literature, by H. A. Giles. Short Histories of 
 The Literatures of the World Series, 190L 
 
 The standard hook, containing a survey of Chinese Literature 
 from the earliest times up to about 1850. Professor Giles 
 devotes considerable space to the poets of the T^ang dynasty, and 
 gives some delightful renderings of the greater poets, such as 
 Li Po and Tu Fu.^ 
 
 Poesies de l'Epoque des Thang. Paris, 1862. By the 
 Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys. 
 
 A valuable monograph on the poetry of the T'ang period, 
 containing tnany prose translations and a careful study of 
 Chinese verse form. 
 
 The Jade Chaplet, in Twenty-four Beads. A Collection 
 of Songs, Ballads, etc., from the Chinese, by G. C. Stent. 
 London, 1874. 
 
 Contains translations of some of the old Chinese ballads on the 
 subject of the Emperor Ming Huang of the T'ang dynasty. The 
 verse is poor in quality but the subject-matter of great interest. 
 
 Poems of the T'ang Dynasty, in Chinese. Two volumes. 
 
 Ueber zwei Sammlungen chinesischer Gedichte aus 
 DER Dynastie Thang, von H. Plath. Vienna, 1869. 
 
 Bluten chinesischer Dichtung, aus der Zeit der Han- 
 sechs Dynastie. Magdeburg, 1899. 
 
 A most valuable book on the subject. Contains 21 Chinese 
 illustrations. 
 
 GENERAL 
 The Poetry of the Chinese, by Sir Jolm Davis. London, 
 1870. 
 
 An interesting essay on Chinese poetry, together with several 
 examples rendered into English verse. Owing, however, to the 
 researches of later sinologues, many of his conclusions, especially 
 as regards pronunciation, are out of date. 
 
 La Pobsie Chinoise, by C. de Harlez. Bruxelles, 1892. 
 
 The best treatise on Chinese poetry that has yet appeared. 
 The passage dealing with Chinese style is especially illuminating. 
 The whole essay is deserving of a wider circulation. 
 
 Notes on Chinese Literature, by A. Wylie. London, 
 1867. 
 
 Contains a vast deal of interesting information on the subject 
 of Chinese literature, and notices of all the important collectiont 
 of Chinese verse that have been made from the earliest times.
 
 RSITV OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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