There came a day,--they suddenly took her from me;
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
Waley - 170 Chinese Poems
The T'ang History relates the episode as follows: "Yuan was
staying the night at the Fu-shui Inn; just as he was preparing to go to
sleep in the Main Hall, the court-official Li Shih-yuan also arrived.
Yuan Ch? n should have offered to withdraw from the Hall. He did not do
so and a scuffle ensued. Yuan, locked out of the building, took off his
shoes and stole round to the back, hoping to find another way in. Liu
followed with a whip and struck him across the face. "
[45] Yuan has told the story of this intrigue in an autobiographical
fragment, of which I hope to publish a translation. Upon this fragment
is founded the famous fourteenth-century drama, "The Western Pavilion. "
The separation was a heavy blow to Po Chu-i. In a poem called "Climbing
Alone to the Lo-yu Gardens" he says:
I look down on the Twelve City Streets:--
Red dust flanked by green trees!
Coaches and horsemen alone fill my eyes;
I do not see whom my heart longs to see.
K'ung T'an has died at Lo-yang;
Yuan Ch? n is banished to Ching-m? n.
Of all that walk on the North-South Road
There is not one that I care for more than the rest!
In 804 on the death of his father, and again in 811 on the death of his
mother, he spent periods of retirement on the Wei river near Ch'ang-an.
It was during the second of these periods that he wrote the long poem
(260 lines) called "Visiting the Wu-ch? n Temple. " Soon after his return
to Ch'ang-an, which took place in the winter of 814, he fell into
official disfavour. In two long memorials entitled "On Stopping the
War," he had criticized the handling of a campaign against an
unimportant tribe of Tartars, which he considered had been unduly
prolonged. In a series of poems he had satirized the rapacity of minor
officials and called attention to the intolerable sufferings of the
masses.
His enemies soon found an opportunity of silencing him. In 814 the Prime
Minister, Wu Yuan-h? ng, was assassinated in broad daylight by an agent
of the revolutionary leader Wu Yuan-chi. Po, in a memorial to the
Throne, pointed out the urgency of remedying the prevailing discontent.
He held at this time the post of assistant secretary to the Princes'
tutor. He should not have criticized the Prime Minister (for being
murdered! ) until the official Censors had spoken, for he held a Palace
appointment which did not carry with it the right of censorship.
His opponents also raked up another charge. His mother had met her death
by falling into a well while looking at flowers. Chu-i had written two
poems entitled "In Praise of Flowers" and "The New Well. " It was
claimed that by choosing such subjects he had infringed the laws of
Filial Piety.
He was banished to Kiukiang (then called Hsun-yang) with the rank of
Sub-Prefect. After three years he was given the Governorship of
Chung-chou, a remote place in Ssech'uan. On the way up the Yangtze he
met Yuan Ch? n after three years of separation. They spent a few days
together at I-ch'ang, exploring the rock-caves of the neighbourhood.
Chung-chou is noted for its "many flowers and exotic trees," which were
a constant delight to its new Governor. In the winter of 819 he was
recalled to the capital and became a second-class Assistant Secretary.
About this time Yuan Ch? n also returned to the city.
In 821 the Emperor Mou Tsung came to the throne. His arbitrary
mis-government soon caused a fresh rising in the north-west. Chu-i
remonstrated in a series of memorials and was again removed from the
capital--this time to be Governor of the important town of Hangchow.
Yuan now held a judicial post at Ningpo and the two were occasionally
able to meet.
In 824 his Governorship expired and he lived (with the nominal rank of
Imperial Tutor) at the village of Li-tao-li, near Lo-yang. It was here
that he took into his household two girls, Fan-su and Man-tz? , whose
singing and dancing enlivened his retreat. He also brought with him from
Hangchow a famous "Indian rock," and two cranes of the celebrated
"Hua-t'ing" breed. Other amenities of his life at this time were a
recipe for making sweet wine, the gift of Ch'? n Hao-hsien; a harp-melody
taught him by Ts'ui Hsuan-liang; and a song called "Autumn Thoughts,"
brought by the concubine of a visitor from Ssech'uan.
In 825 he became Governor of Soochow. Here at the age of fifty-three he
enjoyed a kind of second youth, much more sociable than that of thirty
years before; we find him endlessly picnicking and feasting. But after
two years illness obliged him to retire.
He next held various posts at the capital, but again fell ill, and in
829 settled at Lo-yang as Governor of the Province of Honan. Here his
first son, A-ts'ui, was born, but died in the following year.
In 831 Yuan Ch? n also died.
Henceforth, though for thirteen years he continued to hold nominal
posts, he lived a life of retirement. In 832 he repaired an unoccupied
part of the Hsiang-shan monastery at Lung-m? n,[46] a few miles south of
Lo-yang, and lived there, calling himself the Hermit of Hsiang-shan.
Once he invited to dinner eight other elderly and retired officials; the
occasion was recorded in a picture entitled "The Nine Old Men at
Hsiang-shan. " There is no evidence that his association with them was
otherwise than transient, though legend (see "Memoires Concernant les
Chinois" and Giles, Biographical Dictionary) has invested the incident
with an undue importance. He amused himself at this time by writing a
description of his daily life which would be more interesting if it were
not so closely modelled on a famous memoir by T'ao Ch'ien. In the winter
of 839 he was attacked by paralysis and lost the use of his left leg.
After many months in bed he was again able to visit his garden, carried
by Ju-man, a favourite monk.
[46] Famous for its rock-sculptures, carved in the sixth and seventh
centuries.
In 842 Liu Yu-hsi, the last survivor of the four friends, and a constant
visitor at the monastery, "went to wander with Yuan Ch? n in Hades. " The
monk Ju-man also died.
The remaining years of Po's life were spent in collecting and arranging
his Complete Works. Copies were presented to the principal monasteries
(the "Public Libraries" of the period) in the towns with which he had
been connected. He died in 846, leaving instructions that his funeral
should be without pomp and that he should be buried not in the family
tomb at Hsia-kuei, but by Ju-man's side in the Hsiang-shan Monastery. He
desired that a posthumous title should not be awarded.
The most striking characteristic of Po Chu-i's poetry is its verbal
simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his
poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expression which she
could not understand. The poems of his contemporaries were mere elegant
diversions which enabled the scholar to display his erudition, or the
literary juggler his dexterity. Po expounded his theory of poetry in a
letter to Yuan Ch? n. Like Confucius, he regarded art solely as a method
of conveying instruction. He is not the only great artist who has
advanced this untenable theory. He accordingly valued his didactic poems
far above his other work; but it is obvious that much of his best poetry
conveys no moral whatever. He admits, indeed, that among his
"miscellaneous stanzas" many were inspired by some momentary sensation
or passing event. "A single laugh or a single sigh were rapidly
translated into verse. "
The didactic poems or "satires" belong to the period before his first
banishment. "When the tyrants and favourites heard my Songs of Ch'in,
they looked at one another and changed countenance," he boasts. Satire,
in the European sense, implies _wit_; but Po's satires are as lacking in
true wit as they are unquestionably full of true poetry. We must regard
them simply as moral tales in verse.
In the conventional lyric poetry of his predecessors he finds little to
admire. Among the earlier poems of the T'ang dynasty he selects for
praise the series by Ch'? n Tz? -ang, which includes "Business Men. " In Li
Po and Tu Fu he finds a deficiency of "f? ng" and "ya. " The two terms are
borrowed from the Preface to the Odes. "F? ng" means "criticism of one's
rulers"; "ya," "moral guidance to the masses. "
"The skill," he says in the same letter, "which Tu Fu shows in threading
on to his _lu-shih_ a ramification of allusions ancient and modern could
not be surpassed; in this he is even superior to Li Po. But, if we take
the 'Press-gang' and verses like that stanza:
At the palace doors the smell of meat and wine;
On the road the bones of one who was frozen to death.
what a small part of his whole work it represents! "
Content, in short, he valued far above form: and it was part of his
theory, though certainly not of his practice, that this content ought to
be definitely moral. He aimed at raising poetry from the triviality into
which it had sunk and restoring it to its proper intellectual level. It
is an irony that he should be chiefly known to posterity, in China,
Japan, and the West, as the author of the "Everlasting Wrong. "[47] He
set little store by the poem himself, and, though a certain political
moral might be read into it, its appeal is clearly romantic.
[47] Giles, "Chinese Literature," p. 169.
His other poem of sentiment, the "Lute Girl,"[48] accords even less with
his stated principles. With these he ranks his _Lu-shih_; and it should
here be noted that all the satires and long poems are in the old style
of versification, while his lighter poems are in the strict, modern
form. With his satires he classes his "reflective" poems, such as
"Singing in the Mountains," "On being removed from Hsun-yang," "Pruning
Trees," etc. These are all in the old style.
[48] Giles, "Chinese Literature," p. 165.
No poet in the world can ever have enjoyed greater contemporary
popularity than Po. His poems were "on the mouths of kings, princes,
concubines, ladies, plough-boys, and grooms. " They were inscribed "on
the walls of village-schools, temples, and ships-cabins. " "A certain
Captain Kao Hsia-yu was courting a dancing-girl. 'You must not think I
am an ordinary dancing-girl,' she said to him, 'I can recite Master Po's
"Everlasting Wrong. "' And she put up her price. "
But this popularity was confined to the long, romantic poems and the
_Lu-shih_. "The world," writes Po to Yuan Ch? n, "values highest just
those of my poems which I most despise. Of contemporaries you alone have
understood my satires and reflective poems. A hundred, a thousand years
hence perhaps some one will come who will understand them as you have
done. "
The popularity of his lighter poems lasted till the Ming dynasty, when a
wave of pedantry swept over China. At that period his poetry was
considered vulgar, because it was not erudite; and prosaic, because it
was not rhetorical.
Although they valued form far above content, not even the Ming critics
can accuse him of slovenly writing. His versification is admitted by
them to be "correct. "
Caring, indeed, more for matter than for manner, he used with facility
and precision the technical instruments which were at his disposal. Many
of the later anthologies omit his name altogether, but he has always had
isolated admirers. Yuan Mei imitates him constantly, and Chao I (died
1814) writes: "Those who accuse him of being vulgar and prosaic know
nothing of poetry. "
Even during his lifetime his reputation had reached Japan, and great
writers like Michizane were not ashamed to borrow from him. He is still
held in high repute there, is the subject of a N? Play and has even
become a kind of Shint? deity. It is significant that the only copy of
his works in the British Museum is a seventeenth-century Japanese
edition.
It is usual to close a biographical notice with an attempt to describe
the "character" of one's subject. But I hold myself absolved from such a
task; for the sixty poems which follow will enable the reader to perform
it for himself.
AN EARLY LEVEE
ADDRESSED TO CH'? N, THE HERMIT
At Ch'ang-an--a full foot of snow;
A levee at dawn--to bestow congratulations on the Emperor.
Just as I was nearing the Gate of the Silver Terrace,
After I had left the suburb of Hsin-ch'ang
On the high causeway my horse's foot slipped;
In the middle of the journey my lantern suddenly went out.
Ten leagues riding, always facing to the North;
The cold wind almost blew off my ears.
I waited for the bell outside the Five Gates;
I waited for the summons within the Triple Hall.
My hair and beard were frozen and covered with icicles;
My coat and robe--chilly like water.
Suddenly I thought of Hsien-yu Valley
And secretly envied Ch'? n Chu-shih,
In warm bed-socks dozing beneath the rugs
And not getting up till the sun has mounted the sky.
BEING ON DUTY ALL NIGHT IN THE PALACE AND DREAMING OF THE HSIEN-YU
TEMPLE
At the western window I paused from writing rescripts;
The pines and bamboos were all buried in stillness.
The moon rose and a calm wind came;
Suddenly, it was like an evening in the hills.
And so, as I dozed, I dreamed of the South West
And thought I was staying at the Hsien-yu Temple. [49]
When I woke and heard the dripping of the Palace clock
I still thought it the murmur of a mountain stream.
[49] Where the poet used to spend his holidays.
PASSING T'IEN-M? N STREET IN CH'ANG-AN AND SEEING A DISTANT VIEW OF
CHUNG-NAN[50] MOUNTAIN
The snow has gone from Chung-nan; spring is almost come.
Lovely in the distance its blue colours, against the brown of the
streets.
A thousand coaches, ten thousand horsemen pass down the Nine Roads;
Turns his head and looks at the mountains,--not one man!
[50] Part of the great Nan Shan range, fifteen miles south of Ch'ang-an.
THE LETTER
_Preface_:--After I parted with Yuan Ch? n, I suddenly dreamt one night
that I saw him. When I awoke, I found that a letter from him had just
arrived and, enclosed in it, a poem on the _paulovnia_ flower.
We talked together in the Yung-shou Temple;
We parted to the north of the Hsin-ch'ang dyke.
Going home--I shed a few tears,
Grieving about things,--not sorry for you.
Long, long the road to Lan-t'ien;
You said yourself you would not be able to write.
Reckoning up your halts for eating and sleeping--
By this time you've crossed the Shang mountains.
Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And _you_ said: "I miss you bitterly,
But there's no one here to send to you with a letter. "
When I awoke, before I had time to speak,
A knocking on the door sounded "Doong, doong! "
They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter,--a single scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw you my clothes, all topsy-turvy.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within;
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile's heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room left to talk about the weather!
But you said that when you wrote
You were staying for the night to the east of Shang-chou;
Sitting alone, lighted by a solitary candle
Lodging in the mountain hostel of Yang-Ch'? ng.
Night was late when you finished writing,
The mountain moon was slanting towards the west.
What is it lies aslant across the moon?
A single tree of purple _paulovnia_ flowers--
Paulovnia flowers just on the point of falling
Are a symbol to express "thinking of an absent friend. "
Lovingly--you wrote on the back side,
To send in the letter, your "Poem of the Paulovnia Flower. "
The Poem of the Paulovnia Flower has eight rhymes;
Yet these eight couplets have cast a spell on my heart.
They have taken hold of this morning's thoughts
And carried them to yours, the night you wrote your letter.
The whole poem I read three times;
Each verse ten times I recite.
So precious to me are the fourscore words
That each letter changes into a bar of gold!
REJOICING AT THE ARRIVAL OF CH'? N HSIUNG
(_Circa_ A. D. 812)
When the yellow bird's note was almost stopped;
And half formed the green plum's fruit;
Sitting and grieving that spring things were over,
I rose and entered the Eastern Garden's gate.
I carried my cup and was dully drinking alone:
Suddenly I heard a knocking sound at the door.
Dwelling secluded, I was glad that someone had come;
How much the more, when I saw it was Ch'? n Hsiung!
At ease and leisure,--all day we talked;
Crowding and jostling,--the feelings of many years.
How great a thing is a single cup of wine!
For it makes us tell the story of our whole lives.
GOLDEN BELLS
When I was almost forty
I had a daughter whose name was Golden Bells.
Now it is just a year since she was born;
She is learning to sit and cannot yet talk.
Ashamed,--to find that I have not a sage's heart:
I cannot resist vulgar thoughts and feelings.
Henceforward I am tied to things outside myself:
My only reward,--the pleasure I am getting now.
If I am spared the grief of her dying young,
Then I shall have the trouble of getting her married.
My plan for retiring and going back to the hills
Must now be postponed for fifteen years!
REMEMBERING GOLDEN BELLS
Ruined and ill,--a man of two score;
Pretty and guileless,--a girl of three.
Not a boy,--but, still better than nothing:
To soothe one's feeling,--from time to time a kiss!
There came a day,--they suddenly took her from me;
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
And when I remember how just at the time she died
She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,
_Then_ I know that the ties of flesh and blood
Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.
At last, by thinking of the time before she was born,
By thought and reason I drove the pain away.
Since my heart forgot her, many days have passed
And three times winter has changed to spring.
This morning, for a little, the old grief came back,
Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse.
ILLNESS
Sad, sad--lean with long illness;
Monotonous, monotonous--days and nights pass.
The summer trees have clad themselves in shade;
The autumn "lan"[51] already houses the dew.
The eggs that lay in the nest when I took to bed
Have changed into little birds and flown away.
The worm that then lay hidden in its hole
Has hatched into a cricket sitting on the tree.
The Four Seasons go on for ever and ever:
In all Nature nothing stops to rest
Even for a moment. Only the sick man's heart
Deep down still aches as of old!
[51] The epidendrum.
THE DRAGON OF THE BLACK POOL
A SATIRE
Deep the waters of the Black Pool, coloured like ink;
They say a Holy Dragon lives there, whom men have never seen.
Beside the Pool they have built a shrine; the authorities have
established a ritual;
A dragon by itself remains a dragon, but men can make it a god.
Prosperity and disaster, rain and drought, plagues and pestilences--
By the village people were all regarded as the Sacred Dragon's
doing.
They all made offerings of sucking-pig and poured libations of wine;
The morning prayers and evening gifts depended on a "medium's"
advice
When the dragon comes, ah!
The wind stirs and sighs
Paper money thrown, ah!
Silk umbrellas waved.
When the dragon goes, ah!
The wind also--still.
Incense-fire dies, ah!
The cups and vessels are cold. [52]
[52] Parody of a famous Han dynasty hymn.
Meats lie stacked on the rocks of the Pool's shore;
Wine flows on the grass in front of the shrine.
I do not know, of all those offerings, how much the Dragon eats;
But the mice of the woods and the foxes of the hills are
continually drunk and sated.
Why are the foxes so lucky?
What have the sucking-pigs done,
That year by year _they_ should be killed, merely to glut the foxes?
That the foxes are robbing the Sacred Dragon and eating His
sucking-pig,
Beneath the nine-fold depths of His pool, does He know or not?
THE GRAIN TRIBUTE
Written _circa_ 812, showing one of the poet's periods of retirement.
When the officials come to receive his grain-tribute, he remembers that
he is only giving back what he had taken during his years of office.
Salaries were paid partly in kind.
There came an officer knocking by night at my door--
In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.
My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,
But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.
Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,
A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.
But still they cry that it is not paid in full:
With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.
Once, in error, I entered public life;
I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.
In succession I occupied four official posts;
For doing nothing,--ten years' salary!
Often have I heard that saying of ancient men
That "good and ill follow in an endless chain. "
And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest
To return to others the corn in my great barn.
THE PEOPLE OF TAO-CHOU
In the land of Tao-chou
Many of the people are dwarfs;
The tallest of them never grow to more than three feet.
They were sold in the market as dwarf slaves and yearly sent to
Court;
Described as "an offering of natural products from the land of
Tao-chou. "
A strange "offering of natural products"; I never heard of one yet
That parted men from those they loved, never to meet again!
Old men--weeping for their grandsons; mothers for their children!
One day--Yang Ch'? ng came to govern the land;
He refused to send up dwarf slaves in spite of incessant mandates.
He replied to the Emperor "Your servant finds in the Six Canonical
Books
'In offering products, one must offer what is there, and not what
isn't there'
On the waters and lands of Tao-chou, among all the things that live
I only find dwarfish _people_; no dwarfish _slaves_. "
The Emperor's heart was deeply moved and he sealed and sent a scroll
"The yearly tribute of dwarfish slaves is henceforth annulled. "
The people of Tao-chou,
Old ones and young ones, how great their joy!
Father with son and brother with brother henceforward kept together;
From that day for ever more they lived as free men.
The people of Tao-chou
Still enjoy this gift.
And even now when they speak of the Governor
Tears start to their eyes.
And lest their children and their children's children should forget
the Governor's name,
When boys are born the syllable "Yang" is often used in their
forename.
THE OLD HARP
Of cord and cassia-wood is the harp compounded:
Within it lie ancient melodies.
Ancient melodies--weak and savourless,
Not appealing to present men's taste.
Light and colour are faded from the jade stops:
Dust has covered the rose-red strings.
Decay and ruin came to it long ago,
But the sound that is left is still cold and clear.
I do not refuse to play it, if you want me to:
But even if I play, people will not listen.
* * * * *
How did it come to be neglected so?
Because of the Ch'iang flute and the Ch'in flageolet. [53]
[53] Barbarous modern instruments.
THE HARPER OF CHAO
The singers have hushed their notes of clear song:
The red sleeves of the dancers are motionless.
Hugging his lute, the old harper of Chao
Rocks and sways as he touches the five chords.
The loud notes swell and scatter abroad:
"Sa, sa," like wind blowing the rain.
The soft notes dying almost to nothing:
"Ch'ieh, ch'ieh," like the voice of ghosts talking.
Now as glad as the magpie's lucky song:
Again bitter as the gibbon's ominous cry.
His ten fingers have no fixed note:
Up and down--"kung," chih, and yu. [54]
And those who sit and listen to the tune he plays
Of soul and body lose the mastery.
And those who pass that way as he plays the tune,
Suddenly stop and cannot raise their feet.
Alas, alas that the ears of common men
Should love the modern and not love the old.
Thus it is that the harp in the green window
Day by day is covered deeper with dust.
[54] Tonic, dominant and superdominant of the ancient five-note scale.
THE FLOWER MARKET
In the Royal City spring is almost over:
Tinkle, tinkle--the coaches and horsemen pass.
We tell each other "This is the peony season":
And follow with the crowd that goes to the Flower Market.
"Cheap and dear--no uniform price:
The cost of the plant depends on the number of blossoms.
For the fine flower,--a hundred pieces of damask:
For the cheap flower,--five bits of silk.
Above is spread an awning to protect them:
Around is woven a wattle-fence to screen them.
If you sprinkle water and cover the roots with mud,
When they are transplanted, they will not lose their beauty. "
Each household thoughtlessly follows the custom,
Man by man, no one realizing.
There happened to be an old farm labourer
Who came by chance that way.
He bowed his head and sighed a deep sigh:
But this sigh nobody understood.
He was thinking, "A cluster of deep-red flowers
Would pay the taxes of ten poor houses. "
THE PRISONER
Written in A. D. 809
Tartars led in chains,
Tartars led in chains!
Their ears pierced, their faces bruised--they are driven into the
land of Ch'in.
The Son of Heaven took pity on them and would not have them slain.
He sent them away to the south-east, to the lands of Wu and Yueh.
A petty officer in a yellow coat took down their names and surnames:
They were led from the city of Ch'ang-an under escort of an armed
guard.
Their bodies were covered with the wounds of arrows, their bones
stood out from their cheeks.
They had grown so weak they could only march a single stage a day.
In the morning they must satisfy hunger and thirst with neither
plate nor cup:
At night they must lie in their dirt and rags on beds that stank
with filth.
Suddenly they came to the Yangtze River and remembered the waters
of Chiao. [55]
With lowered hands and levelled voices they sobbed a muffled song.
Then one Tartar lifted up his voice and spoke to the other Tartars,
"_Your_ sorrows are none at all compared with _my_ sorrows. "
Those that were with him in the same band asked to hear his tale:
As he tried to speak the words were choked by anger.
He told them "I was born and bred in the town of Liang-yuan. [56]
In the frontier wars of Ta-li[57] I fell into the Tartars' hands.
Since the days the Tartars took me alive forty years have passed:
They put me into a coat of skins tied with a belt of rope.
Only on the first of the first month might I wear my Chinese dress.
As I put on my coat and arranged my cap, how fast the tears flowed!
I made in my heart a secret vow I would find a way home:
I hid my plan from my Tartar wife and the children she had borne me
in the land.
I thought to myself, 'It is well for me that my limbs are still
strong,'
And yet, being old, in my heart I feared I should never live to
return.
The Tartar chieftains shoot so well that the birds are afraid to fly:
From the risk of their arrows I escaped alive and fled swiftly home.
Hiding all day and walking all night, I crossed the Great Desert:[58]
Where clouds are dark and the moon black and the sands eddy in the
wind.
Frightened, I sheltered at the Green Grave,[59] where the frozen
grasses are few:
Stealthily I crossed the Yellow River, at night, on the thin ice,
Suddenly I heard Han[60] drums and the sound of soldiers coming:
I went to meet them at the road-side, bowing to them as they came.
But the moving horsemen did not hear that I spoke the Han tongue:
Their Captain took me for a Tartar born and had me bound in chains.
They are sending me away to the south-east, to a low and swampy
land:
No one now will take pity on me: resistance is all in vain.
Thinking of this, my voice chokes and I ask of Heaven above,
Was I spared from death only to spend the rest of my years in
sorrow?
My native village of Liang-yuan I shall not see again:
My wife and children in the Tartars' land I have fruitlessly
deserted.
When I fell among Tartars and was taken prisoner, I pined for the
land of Han:
Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into
a Tartar.
Had I but known what my fate would be, I would not have started
home!
For the two lands, so wide apart, are alike in the sorrow they
bring.
Tartar prisoners in chains!
Of all the sorrows of all the prisoners mine is the hardest to bear!
Never in the world has so great a wrong befallen the lot of man,--
A Han heart and a Han tongue set in the body of a Turk. "
[55] In Turkestan.
[56] North of Ch'ang-an.
[57] The period Ta-li, A. D. 766-780.
[58] The Gobi Desert.
[59] The grave of Chao-chun, a Chinese girl who in 33 B. C. was "bestowed
upon the Khan of the Hsiung-nu as a mark of Imperial regard" (Giles).
Hers was the only grave in this desolate district on which grass would
grow.
[60] _I. e. _, Chinese.
THE CHANCELLOR'S GRAVEL-DRIVE
(A SATIRE ON THE MALTREATMENT OF SUBORDINATES)
A Government-bull yoked to a Government-cart!
Moored by the bank of Ch'an River, a barge loaded with gravel.
A single load of gravel,
How many pounds it weighs!
Carrying at dawn, carrying at dusk, what is it all for?
They are carrying it towards the Five Gates,
To the West of the Main Road.
Under the shadow of green laurels they are making a gravel-drive.
For yesterday arrove, newly appointed,
The Assistant Chancellor of the Realm,
And was terribly afraid that the wet and mud
Would dirty his horse's hoofs.
The Chancellor's horse's hoofs
Stepped on the gravel and remained perfectly clean;
But the bull employed in dragging the cart
Was almost sweating blood.
The Assistant Chancellor's business
Is to "save men, govern the country
And harmonize Yin and Yang. "[61]
Whether the bull's neck is sore
Need not trouble him at all.
[61] The negative and positive principles in nature.
THE MAN WHO DREAMED OF FAIRIES
This poem is an attack on the Emperor Hsien-tsung, A. D. 806-820, who
"was devoted to magic. " A Taoist wizard told him that herbs of longevity
grew near the city of T'ai-chou. The Emperor at once appointed him
prefect of the place, "pour lui permettre d'herboriser plus a son aise"
(Wieger, Textes III, 1723). When the censors protested, the Emperor
replied: "The ruin of a single district would be a small price to pay,
if it could procure longevity for the Lord of Men. "
There was once a man who dreamt he went to Heaven:
His dream-body soared aloft through space.
He rode on the back of a white-plumed crane,
And was led on his flight by two crimson banners.
Whirring of wings and flapping of coat tails!
Jade bells suddenly all a-tinkle!
Half way to Heaven, he looked down beneath him,
Down on the dark turmoil of the World.
Gradually he lost the place of his native town;
Mountains and water--nothing else distinct.
The Eastern Ocean--a single strip of white:
The Hills of China,--five specks of green.
Gliding past him a host of fairies swept
In long procession to the Palace of the Jade City.
How should he guess that the children of Tz? -m? n[62]
Bow to the throne like courtiers of earthly kings?
They take him to the presence of the Mighty Jade Emperor:
He bows his head and proffers loyal homage.
The Emperor says: "We see you have fairy talents:
Be of good heart and do not slight yourself.
We shall send to fetch you in fifteen years
And give you a place in the Courtyard of Immortality. "
Twice bowing, he acknowledged the gracious words:
Then woke from sleep, full of wonder and joy.
He hid his secret and dared not tell it abroad:
But vowed a vow he would live in a cave of rock.
From love and affection he severed kith and kin:
From his eating and drinking he omitted savoury and spice.
His morning meal was a dish of coral-dust:
At night he sipped an essence of dewy mists.
In the empty mountains he lived for thirty years
Daily watching for the Heavenly Coach to come.
The time of appointment was already long past,
But of wings and coach-bells--still no sound.
His teeth and hair daily withered and decayed:
His ears and eyes gradually lost their keenness.
One morning he suffered the Common Change
And his body was one with the dust and dirt of the hill.
Gods and fairies! If indeed such things there be,
Their ways are beyond the striving of mortal men.
If you have not on your skull the Golden Bump's protrusion,
If your name is absent from the rolls of the Red Terrace,
In vain you learn the "Method of Avoiding Food":
For naught you study the "Book of Alchemic Lore. "
Though you sweat and toil, what shall your trouble bring?
You will only shorten the five-score years of your span.
Sad, alas, the man who dreamt of Fairies!
For a single dream spoiled his whole life.
[62] _I. e. _, the Immortals.
MAGIC
Boundless, the great sea.
Straight down,--no bottom: sideways,--no border.
Of cloudy waves and misty billows down in the uttermost depths
Men have fabled, in the midst there stand three sacred hills.
On the hills, thick growing,--herbs that banish Death.
Wings grow on those who eat them and they turn into heavenly "hsien. "
The Lord of Ch'in[63] and Wu of Han[64] believed in these stories:
And magic-workers year by year were sent to gather the herbs.
The Blessed Islands, now and of old, what but an empty tale?
The misty waters spread before them and they knew not where to seek.
Boundless, the great sea.
Dauntless, the mighty wind.
Their eyes search but cannot see the shores of the Blessed Islands.
They cannot find the Blessed Isles and yet they dare not return:
Youths and maidens that began the quest grew grey on board the boat.
They found that the writings of Hsu[65] were all boasts and lies:
To the Lofty Principle and Great Unity in vain they raised their
prayers.
Do you not see
The graves on the top of Black Horse Hill[66] and the tombs at
Mo-ling? [67]
What is left but the sighing wind blowing in the tangled grasses?
Yes, and what is more,
The Dark and Primal Master of Sages in his five thousand words[68]
Never spoke of herbs,
Never spoke of "hsien,"
Nor spoke of soaring in broad daylight up to the blue heaven.
[63] The "First Emperor," 259-210 B. C.
[64] Wu Ti, 156-87 B. C.
[65] Ssu Shih. Giles, 1276.
[66] The burial-places of these two Emperors.
[67] _Ibid.
staying the night at the Fu-shui Inn; just as he was preparing to go to
sleep in the Main Hall, the court-official Li Shih-yuan also arrived.
Yuan Ch? n should have offered to withdraw from the Hall. He did not do
so and a scuffle ensued. Yuan, locked out of the building, took off his
shoes and stole round to the back, hoping to find another way in. Liu
followed with a whip and struck him across the face. "
[45] Yuan has told the story of this intrigue in an autobiographical
fragment, of which I hope to publish a translation. Upon this fragment
is founded the famous fourteenth-century drama, "The Western Pavilion. "
The separation was a heavy blow to Po Chu-i. In a poem called "Climbing
Alone to the Lo-yu Gardens" he says:
I look down on the Twelve City Streets:--
Red dust flanked by green trees!
Coaches and horsemen alone fill my eyes;
I do not see whom my heart longs to see.
K'ung T'an has died at Lo-yang;
Yuan Ch? n is banished to Ching-m? n.
Of all that walk on the North-South Road
There is not one that I care for more than the rest!
In 804 on the death of his father, and again in 811 on the death of his
mother, he spent periods of retirement on the Wei river near Ch'ang-an.
It was during the second of these periods that he wrote the long poem
(260 lines) called "Visiting the Wu-ch? n Temple. " Soon after his return
to Ch'ang-an, which took place in the winter of 814, he fell into
official disfavour. In two long memorials entitled "On Stopping the
War," he had criticized the handling of a campaign against an
unimportant tribe of Tartars, which he considered had been unduly
prolonged. In a series of poems he had satirized the rapacity of minor
officials and called attention to the intolerable sufferings of the
masses.
His enemies soon found an opportunity of silencing him. In 814 the Prime
Minister, Wu Yuan-h? ng, was assassinated in broad daylight by an agent
of the revolutionary leader Wu Yuan-chi. Po, in a memorial to the
Throne, pointed out the urgency of remedying the prevailing discontent.
He held at this time the post of assistant secretary to the Princes'
tutor. He should not have criticized the Prime Minister (for being
murdered! ) until the official Censors had spoken, for he held a Palace
appointment which did not carry with it the right of censorship.
His opponents also raked up another charge. His mother had met her death
by falling into a well while looking at flowers. Chu-i had written two
poems entitled "In Praise of Flowers" and "The New Well. " It was
claimed that by choosing such subjects he had infringed the laws of
Filial Piety.
He was banished to Kiukiang (then called Hsun-yang) with the rank of
Sub-Prefect. After three years he was given the Governorship of
Chung-chou, a remote place in Ssech'uan. On the way up the Yangtze he
met Yuan Ch? n after three years of separation. They spent a few days
together at I-ch'ang, exploring the rock-caves of the neighbourhood.
Chung-chou is noted for its "many flowers and exotic trees," which were
a constant delight to its new Governor. In the winter of 819 he was
recalled to the capital and became a second-class Assistant Secretary.
About this time Yuan Ch? n also returned to the city.
In 821 the Emperor Mou Tsung came to the throne. His arbitrary
mis-government soon caused a fresh rising in the north-west. Chu-i
remonstrated in a series of memorials and was again removed from the
capital--this time to be Governor of the important town of Hangchow.
Yuan now held a judicial post at Ningpo and the two were occasionally
able to meet.
In 824 his Governorship expired and he lived (with the nominal rank of
Imperial Tutor) at the village of Li-tao-li, near Lo-yang. It was here
that he took into his household two girls, Fan-su and Man-tz? , whose
singing and dancing enlivened his retreat. He also brought with him from
Hangchow a famous "Indian rock," and two cranes of the celebrated
"Hua-t'ing" breed. Other amenities of his life at this time were a
recipe for making sweet wine, the gift of Ch'? n Hao-hsien; a harp-melody
taught him by Ts'ui Hsuan-liang; and a song called "Autumn Thoughts,"
brought by the concubine of a visitor from Ssech'uan.
In 825 he became Governor of Soochow. Here at the age of fifty-three he
enjoyed a kind of second youth, much more sociable than that of thirty
years before; we find him endlessly picnicking and feasting. But after
two years illness obliged him to retire.
He next held various posts at the capital, but again fell ill, and in
829 settled at Lo-yang as Governor of the Province of Honan. Here his
first son, A-ts'ui, was born, but died in the following year.
In 831 Yuan Ch? n also died.
Henceforth, though for thirteen years he continued to hold nominal
posts, he lived a life of retirement. In 832 he repaired an unoccupied
part of the Hsiang-shan monastery at Lung-m? n,[46] a few miles south of
Lo-yang, and lived there, calling himself the Hermit of Hsiang-shan.
Once he invited to dinner eight other elderly and retired officials; the
occasion was recorded in a picture entitled "The Nine Old Men at
Hsiang-shan. " There is no evidence that his association with them was
otherwise than transient, though legend (see "Memoires Concernant les
Chinois" and Giles, Biographical Dictionary) has invested the incident
with an undue importance. He amused himself at this time by writing a
description of his daily life which would be more interesting if it were
not so closely modelled on a famous memoir by T'ao Ch'ien. In the winter
of 839 he was attacked by paralysis and lost the use of his left leg.
After many months in bed he was again able to visit his garden, carried
by Ju-man, a favourite monk.
[46] Famous for its rock-sculptures, carved in the sixth and seventh
centuries.
In 842 Liu Yu-hsi, the last survivor of the four friends, and a constant
visitor at the monastery, "went to wander with Yuan Ch? n in Hades. " The
monk Ju-man also died.
The remaining years of Po's life were spent in collecting and arranging
his Complete Works. Copies were presented to the principal monasteries
(the "Public Libraries" of the period) in the towns with which he had
been connected. He died in 846, leaving instructions that his funeral
should be without pomp and that he should be buried not in the family
tomb at Hsia-kuei, but by Ju-man's side in the Hsiang-shan Monastery. He
desired that a posthumous title should not be awarded.
The most striking characteristic of Po Chu-i's poetry is its verbal
simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his
poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expression which she
could not understand. The poems of his contemporaries were mere elegant
diversions which enabled the scholar to display his erudition, or the
literary juggler his dexterity. Po expounded his theory of poetry in a
letter to Yuan Ch? n. Like Confucius, he regarded art solely as a method
of conveying instruction. He is not the only great artist who has
advanced this untenable theory. He accordingly valued his didactic poems
far above his other work; but it is obvious that much of his best poetry
conveys no moral whatever. He admits, indeed, that among his
"miscellaneous stanzas" many were inspired by some momentary sensation
or passing event. "A single laugh or a single sigh were rapidly
translated into verse. "
The didactic poems or "satires" belong to the period before his first
banishment. "When the tyrants and favourites heard my Songs of Ch'in,
they looked at one another and changed countenance," he boasts. Satire,
in the European sense, implies _wit_; but Po's satires are as lacking in
true wit as they are unquestionably full of true poetry. We must regard
them simply as moral tales in verse.
In the conventional lyric poetry of his predecessors he finds little to
admire. Among the earlier poems of the T'ang dynasty he selects for
praise the series by Ch'? n Tz? -ang, which includes "Business Men. " In Li
Po and Tu Fu he finds a deficiency of "f? ng" and "ya. " The two terms are
borrowed from the Preface to the Odes. "F? ng" means "criticism of one's
rulers"; "ya," "moral guidance to the masses. "
"The skill," he says in the same letter, "which Tu Fu shows in threading
on to his _lu-shih_ a ramification of allusions ancient and modern could
not be surpassed; in this he is even superior to Li Po. But, if we take
the 'Press-gang' and verses like that stanza:
At the palace doors the smell of meat and wine;
On the road the bones of one who was frozen to death.
what a small part of his whole work it represents! "
Content, in short, he valued far above form: and it was part of his
theory, though certainly not of his practice, that this content ought to
be definitely moral. He aimed at raising poetry from the triviality into
which it had sunk and restoring it to its proper intellectual level. It
is an irony that he should be chiefly known to posterity, in China,
Japan, and the West, as the author of the "Everlasting Wrong. "[47] He
set little store by the poem himself, and, though a certain political
moral might be read into it, its appeal is clearly romantic.
[47] Giles, "Chinese Literature," p. 169.
His other poem of sentiment, the "Lute Girl,"[48] accords even less with
his stated principles. With these he ranks his _Lu-shih_; and it should
here be noted that all the satires and long poems are in the old style
of versification, while his lighter poems are in the strict, modern
form. With his satires he classes his "reflective" poems, such as
"Singing in the Mountains," "On being removed from Hsun-yang," "Pruning
Trees," etc. These are all in the old style.
[48] Giles, "Chinese Literature," p. 165.
No poet in the world can ever have enjoyed greater contemporary
popularity than Po. His poems were "on the mouths of kings, princes,
concubines, ladies, plough-boys, and grooms. " They were inscribed "on
the walls of village-schools, temples, and ships-cabins. " "A certain
Captain Kao Hsia-yu was courting a dancing-girl. 'You must not think I
am an ordinary dancing-girl,' she said to him, 'I can recite Master Po's
"Everlasting Wrong. "' And she put up her price. "
But this popularity was confined to the long, romantic poems and the
_Lu-shih_. "The world," writes Po to Yuan Ch? n, "values highest just
those of my poems which I most despise. Of contemporaries you alone have
understood my satires and reflective poems. A hundred, a thousand years
hence perhaps some one will come who will understand them as you have
done. "
The popularity of his lighter poems lasted till the Ming dynasty, when a
wave of pedantry swept over China. At that period his poetry was
considered vulgar, because it was not erudite; and prosaic, because it
was not rhetorical.
Although they valued form far above content, not even the Ming critics
can accuse him of slovenly writing. His versification is admitted by
them to be "correct. "
Caring, indeed, more for matter than for manner, he used with facility
and precision the technical instruments which were at his disposal. Many
of the later anthologies omit his name altogether, but he has always had
isolated admirers. Yuan Mei imitates him constantly, and Chao I (died
1814) writes: "Those who accuse him of being vulgar and prosaic know
nothing of poetry. "
Even during his lifetime his reputation had reached Japan, and great
writers like Michizane were not ashamed to borrow from him. He is still
held in high repute there, is the subject of a N? Play and has even
become a kind of Shint? deity. It is significant that the only copy of
his works in the British Museum is a seventeenth-century Japanese
edition.
It is usual to close a biographical notice with an attempt to describe
the "character" of one's subject. But I hold myself absolved from such a
task; for the sixty poems which follow will enable the reader to perform
it for himself.
AN EARLY LEVEE
ADDRESSED TO CH'? N, THE HERMIT
At Ch'ang-an--a full foot of snow;
A levee at dawn--to bestow congratulations on the Emperor.
Just as I was nearing the Gate of the Silver Terrace,
After I had left the suburb of Hsin-ch'ang
On the high causeway my horse's foot slipped;
In the middle of the journey my lantern suddenly went out.
Ten leagues riding, always facing to the North;
The cold wind almost blew off my ears.
I waited for the bell outside the Five Gates;
I waited for the summons within the Triple Hall.
My hair and beard were frozen and covered with icicles;
My coat and robe--chilly like water.
Suddenly I thought of Hsien-yu Valley
And secretly envied Ch'? n Chu-shih,
In warm bed-socks dozing beneath the rugs
And not getting up till the sun has mounted the sky.
BEING ON DUTY ALL NIGHT IN THE PALACE AND DREAMING OF THE HSIEN-YU
TEMPLE
At the western window I paused from writing rescripts;
The pines and bamboos were all buried in stillness.
The moon rose and a calm wind came;
Suddenly, it was like an evening in the hills.
And so, as I dozed, I dreamed of the South West
And thought I was staying at the Hsien-yu Temple. [49]
When I woke and heard the dripping of the Palace clock
I still thought it the murmur of a mountain stream.
[49] Where the poet used to spend his holidays.
PASSING T'IEN-M? N STREET IN CH'ANG-AN AND SEEING A DISTANT VIEW OF
CHUNG-NAN[50] MOUNTAIN
The snow has gone from Chung-nan; spring is almost come.
Lovely in the distance its blue colours, against the brown of the
streets.
A thousand coaches, ten thousand horsemen pass down the Nine Roads;
Turns his head and looks at the mountains,--not one man!
[50] Part of the great Nan Shan range, fifteen miles south of Ch'ang-an.
THE LETTER
_Preface_:--After I parted with Yuan Ch? n, I suddenly dreamt one night
that I saw him. When I awoke, I found that a letter from him had just
arrived and, enclosed in it, a poem on the _paulovnia_ flower.
We talked together in the Yung-shou Temple;
We parted to the north of the Hsin-ch'ang dyke.
Going home--I shed a few tears,
Grieving about things,--not sorry for you.
Long, long the road to Lan-t'ien;
You said yourself you would not be able to write.
Reckoning up your halts for eating and sleeping--
By this time you've crossed the Shang mountains.
Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And _you_ said: "I miss you bitterly,
But there's no one here to send to you with a letter. "
When I awoke, before I had time to speak,
A knocking on the door sounded "Doong, doong! "
They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter,--a single scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw you my clothes, all topsy-turvy.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within;
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile's heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room left to talk about the weather!
But you said that when you wrote
You were staying for the night to the east of Shang-chou;
Sitting alone, lighted by a solitary candle
Lodging in the mountain hostel of Yang-Ch'? ng.
Night was late when you finished writing,
The mountain moon was slanting towards the west.
What is it lies aslant across the moon?
A single tree of purple _paulovnia_ flowers--
Paulovnia flowers just on the point of falling
Are a symbol to express "thinking of an absent friend. "
Lovingly--you wrote on the back side,
To send in the letter, your "Poem of the Paulovnia Flower. "
The Poem of the Paulovnia Flower has eight rhymes;
Yet these eight couplets have cast a spell on my heart.
They have taken hold of this morning's thoughts
And carried them to yours, the night you wrote your letter.
The whole poem I read three times;
Each verse ten times I recite.
So precious to me are the fourscore words
That each letter changes into a bar of gold!
REJOICING AT THE ARRIVAL OF CH'? N HSIUNG
(_Circa_ A. D. 812)
When the yellow bird's note was almost stopped;
And half formed the green plum's fruit;
Sitting and grieving that spring things were over,
I rose and entered the Eastern Garden's gate.
I carried my cup and was dully drinking alone:
Suddenly I heard a knocking sound at the door.
Dwelling secluded, I was glad that someone had come;
How much the more, when I saw it was Ch'? n Hsiung!
At ease and leisure,--all day we talked;
Crowding and jostling,--the feelings of many years.
How great a thing is a single cup of wine!
For it makes us tell the story of our whole lives.
GOLDEN BELLS
When I was almost forty
I had a daughter whose name was Golden Bells.
Now it is just a year since she was born;
She is learning to sit and cannot yet talk.
Ashamed,--to find that I have not a sage's heart:
I cannot resist vulgar thoughts and feelings.
Henceforward I am tied to things outside myself:
My only reward,--the pleasure I am getting now.
If I am spared the grief of her dying young,
Then I shall have the trouble of getting her married.
My plan for retiring and going back to the hills
Must now be postponed for fifteen years!
REMEMBERING GOLDEN BELLS
Ruined and ill,--a man of two score;
Pretty and guileless,--a girl of three.
Not a boy,--but, still better than nothing:
To soothe one's feeling,--from time to time a kiss!
There came a day,--they suddenly took her from me;
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
And when I remember how just at the time she died
She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,
_Then_ I know that the ties of flesh and blood
Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.
At last, by thinking of the time before she was born,
By thought and reason I drove the pain away.
Since my heart forgot her, many days have passed
And three times winter has changed to spring.
This morning, for a little, the old grief came back,
Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse.
ILLNESS
Sad, sad--lean with long illness;
Monotonous, monotonous--days and nights pass.
The summer trees have clad themselves in shade;
The autumn "lan"[51] already houses the dew.
The eggs that lay in the nest when I took to bed
Have changed into little birds and flown away.
The worm that then lay hidden in its hole
Has hatched into a cricket sitting on the tree.
The Four Seasons go on for ever and ever:
In all Nature nothing stops to rest
Even for a moment. Only the sick man's heart
Deep down still aches as of old!
[51] The epidendrum.
THE DRAGON OF THE BLACK POOL
A SATIRE
Deep the waters of the Black Pool, coloured like ink;
They say a Holy Dragon lives there, whom men have never seen.
Beside the Pool they have built a shrine; the authorities have
established a ritual;
A dragon by itself remains a dragon, but men can make it a god.
Prosperity and disaster, rain and drought, plagues and pestilences--
By the village people were all regarded as the Sacred Dragon's
doing.
They all made offerings of sucking-pig and poured libations of wine;
The morning prayers and evening gifts depended on a "medium's"
advice
When the dragon comes, ah!
The wind stirs and sighs
Paper money thrown, ah!
Silk umbrellas waved.
When the dragon goes, ah!
The wind also--still.
Incense-fire dies, ah!
The cups and vessels are cold. [52]
[52] Parody of a famous Han dynasty hymn.
Meats lie stacked on the rocks of the Pool's shore;
Wine flows on the grass in front of the shrine.
I do not know, of all those offerings, how much the Dragon eats;
But the mice of the woods and the foxes of the hills are
continually drunk and sated.
Why are the foxes so lucky?
What have the sucking-pigs done,
That year by year _they_ should be killed, merely to glut the foxes?
That the foxes are robbing the Sacred Dragon and eating His
sucking-pig,
Beneath the nine-fold depths of His pool, does He know or not?
THE GRAIN TRIBUTE
Written _circa_ 812, showing one of the poet's periods of retirement.
When the officials come to receive his grain-tribute, he remembers that
he is only giving back what he had taken during his years of office.
Salaries were paid partly in kind.
There came an officer knocking by night at my door--
In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.
My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,
But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.
Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,
A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.
But still they cry that it is not paid in full:
With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.
Once, in error, I entered public life;
I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.
In succession I occupied four official posts;
For doing nothing,--ten years' salary!
Often have I heard that saying of ancient men
That "good and ill follow in an endless chain. "
And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest
To return to others the corn in my great barn.
THE PEOPLE OF TAO-CHOU
In the land of Tao-chou
Many of the people are dwarfs;
The tallest of them never grow to more than three feet.
They were sold in the market as dwarf slaves and yearly sent to
Court;
Described as "an offering of natural products from the land of
Tao-chou. "
A strange "offering of natural products"; I never heard of one yet
That parted men from those they loved, never to meet again!
Old men--weeping for their grandsons; mothers for their children!
One day--Yang Ch'? ng came to govern the land;
He refused to send up dwarf slaves in spite of incessant mandates.
He replied to the Emperor "Your servant finds in the Six Canonical
Books
'In offering products, one must offer what is there, and not what
isn't there'
On the waters and lands of Tao-chou, among all the things that live
I only find dwarfish _people_; no dwarfish _slaves_. "
The Emperor's heart was deeply moved and he sealed and sent a scroll
"The yearly tribute of dwarfish slaves is henceforth annulled. "
The people of Tao-chou,
Old ones and young ones, how great their joy!
Father with son and brother with brother henceforward kept together;
From that day for ever more they lived as free men.
The people of Tao-chou
Still enjoy this gift.
And even now when they speak of the Governor
Tears start to their eyes.
And lest their children and their children's children should forget
the Governor's name,
When boys are born the syllable "Yang" is often used in their
forename.
THE OLD HARP
Of cord and cassia-wood is the harp compounded:
Within it lie ancient melodies.
Ancient melodies--weak and savourless,
Not appealing to present men's taste.
Light and colour are faded from the jade stops:
Dust has covered the rose-red strings.
Decay and ruin came to it long ago,
But the sound that is left is still cold and clear.
I do not refuse to play it, if you want me to:
But even if I play, people will not listen.
* * * * *
How did it come to be neglected so?
Because of the Ch'iang flute and the Ch'in flageolet. [53]
[53] Barbarous modern instruments.
THE HARPER OF CHAO
The singers have hushed their notes of clear song:
The red sleeves of the dancers are motionless.
Hugging his lute, the old harper of Chao
Rocks and sways as he touches the five chords.
The loud notes swell and scatter abroad:
"Sa, sa," like wind blowing the rain.
The soft notes dying almost to nothing:
"Ch'ieh, ch'ieh," like the voice of ghosts talking.
Now as glad as the magpie's lucky song:
Again bitter as the gibbon's ominous cry.
His ten fingers have no fixed note:
Up and down--"kung," chih, and yu. [54]
And those who sit and listen to the tune he plays
Of soul and body lose the mastery.
And those who pass that way as he plays the tune,
Suddenly stop and cannot raise their feet.
Alas, alas that the ears of common men
Should love the modern and not love the old.
Thus it is that the harp in the green window
Day by day is covered deeper with dust.
[54] Tonic, dominant and superdominant of the ancient five-note scale.
THE FLOWER MARKET
In the Royal City spring is almost over:
Tinkle, tinkle--the coaches and horsemen pass.
We tell each other "This is the peony season":
And follow with the crowd that goes to the Flower Market.
"Cheap and dear--no uniform price:
The cost of the plant depends on the number of blossoms.
For the fine flower,--a hundred pieces of damask:
For the cheap flower,--five bits of silk.
Above is spread an awning to protect them:
Around is woven a wattle-fence to screen them.
If you sprinkle water and cover the roots with mud,
When they are transplanted, they will not lose their beauty. "
Each household thoughtlessly follows the custom,
Man by man, no one realizing.
There happened to be an old farm labourer
Who came by chance that way.
He bowed his head and sighed a deep sigh:
But this sigh nobody understood.
He was thinking, "A cluster of deep-red flowers
Would pay the taxes of ten poor houses. "
THE PRISONER
Written in A. D. 809
Tartars led in chains,
Tartars led in chains!
Their ears pierced, their faces bruised--they are driven into the
land of Ch'in.
The Son of Heaven took pity on them and would not have them slain.
He sent them away to the south-east, to the lands of Wu and Yueh.
A petty officer in a yellow coat took down their names and surnames:
They were led from the city of Ch'ang-an under escort of an armed
guard.
Their bodies were covered with the wounds of arrows, their bones
stood out from their cheeks.
They had grown so weak they could only march a single stage a day.
In the morning they must satisfy hunger and thirst with neither
plate nor cup:
At night they must lie in their dirt and rags on beds that stank
with filth.
Suddenly they came to the Yangtze River and remembered the waters
of Chiao. [55]
With lowered hands and levelled voices they sobbed a muffled song.
Then one Tartar lifted up his voice and spoke to the other Tartars,
"_Your_ sorrows are none at all compared with _my_ sorrows. "
Those that were with him in the same band asked to hear his tale:
As he tried to speak the words were choked by anger.
He told them "I was born and bred in the town of Liang-yuan. [56]
In the frontier wars of Ta-li[57] I fell into the Tartars' hands.
Since the days the Tartars took me alive forty years have passed:
They put me into a coat of skins tied with a belt of rope.
Only on the first of the first month might I wear my Chinese dress.
As I put on my coat and arranged my cap, how fast the tears flowed!
I made in my heart a secret vow I would find a way home:
I hid my plan from my Tartar wife and the children she had borne me
in the land.
I thought to myself, 'It is well for me that my limbs are still
strong,'
And yet, being old, in my heart I feared I should never live to
return.
The Tartar chieftains shoot so well that the birds are afraid to fly:
From the risk of their arrows I escaped alive and fled swiftly home.
Hiding all day and walking all night, I crossed the Great Desert:[58]
Where clouds are dark and the moon black and the sands eddy in the
wind.
Frightened, I sheltered at the Green Grave,[59] where the frozen
grasses are few:
Stealthily I crossed the Yellow River, at night, on the thin ice,
Suddenly I heard Han[60] drums and the sound of soldiers coming:
I went to meet them at the road-side, bowing to them as they came.
But the moving horsemen did not hear that I spoke the Han tongue:
Their Captain took me for a Tartar born and had me bound in chains.
They are sending me away to the south-east, to a low and swampy
land:
No one now will take pity on me: resistance is all in vain.
Thinking of this, my voice chokes and I ask of Heaven above,
Was I spared from death only to spend the rest of my years in
sorrow?
My native village of Liang-yuan I shall not see again:
My wife and children in the Tartars' land I have fruitlessly
deserted.
When I fell among Tartars and was taken prisoner, I pined for the
land of Han:
Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into
a Tartar.
Had I but known what my fate would be, I would not have started
home!
For the two lands, so wide apart, are alike in the sorrow they
bring.
Tartar prisoners in chains!
Of all the sorrows of all the prisoners mine is the hardest to bear!
Never in the world has so great a wrong befallen the lot of man,--
A Han heart and a Han tongue set in the body of a Turk. "
[55] In Turkestan.
[56] North of Ch'ang-an.
[57] The period Ta-li, A. D. 766-780.
[58] The Gobi Desert.
[59] The grave of Chao-chun, a Chinese girl who in 33 B. C. was "bestowed
upon the Khan of the Hsiung-nu as a mark of Imperial regard" (Giles).
Hers was the only grave in this desolate district on which grass would
grow.
[60] _I. e. _, Chinese.
THE CHANCELLOR'S GRAVEL-DRIVE
(A SATIRE ON THE MALTREATMENT OF SUBORDINATES)
A Government-bull yoked to a Government-cart!
Moored by the bank of Ch'an River, a barge loaded with gravel.
A single load of gravel,
How many pounds it weighs!
Carrying at dawn, carrying at dusk, what is it all for?
They are carrying it towards the Five Gates,
To the West of the Main Road.
Under the shadow of green laurels they are making a gravel-drive.
For yesterday arrove, newly appointed,
The Assistant Chancellor of the Realm,
And was terribly afraid that the wet and mud
Would dirty his horse's hoofs.
The Chancellor's horse's hoofs
Stepped on the gravel and remained perfectly clean;
But the bull employed in dragging the cart
Was almost sweating blood.
The Assistant Chancellor's business
Is to "save men, govern the country
And harmonize Yin and Yang. "[61]
Whether the bull's neck is sore
Need not trouble him at all.
[61] The negative and positive principles in nature.
THE MAN WHO DREAMED OF FAIRIES
This poem is an attack on the Emperor Hsien-tsung, A. D. 806-820, who
"was devoted to magic. " A Taoist wizard told him that herbs of longevity
grew near the city of T'ai-chou. The Emperor at once appointed him
prefect of the place, "pour lui permettre d'herboriser plus a son aise"
(Wieger, Textes III, 1723). When the censors protested, the Emperor
replied: "The ruin of a single district would be a small price to pay,
if it could procure longevity for the Lord of Men. "
There was once a man who dreamt he went to Heaven:
His dream-body soared aloft through space.
He rode on the back of a white-plumed crane,
And was led on his flight by two crimson banners.
Whirring of wings and flapping of coat tails!
Jade bells suddenly all a-tinkle!
Half way to Heaven, he looked down beneath him,
Down on the dark turmoil of the World.
Gradually he lost the place of his native town;
Mountains and water--nothing else distinct.
The Eastern Ocean--a single strip of white:
The Hills of China,--five specks of green.
Gliding past him a host of fairies swept
In long procession to the Palace of the Jade City.
How should he guess that the children of Tz? -m? n[62]
Bow to the throne like courtiers of earthly kings?
They take him to the presence of the Mighty Jade Emperor:
He bows his head and proffers loyal homage.
The Emperor says: "We see you have fairy talents:
Be of good heart and do not slight yourself.
We shall send to fetch you in fifteen years
And give you a place in the Courtyard of Immortality. "
Twice bowing, he acknowledged the gracious words:
Then woke from sleep, full of wonder and joy.
He hid his secret and dared not tell it abroad:
But vowed a vow he would live in a cave of rock.
From love and affection he severed kith and kin:
From his eating and drinking he omitted savoury and spice.
His morning meal was a dish of coral-dust:
At night he sipped an essence of dewy mists.
In the empty mountains he lived for thirty years
Daily watching for the Heavenly Coach to come.
The time of appointment was already long past,
But of wings and coach-bells--still no sound.
His teeth and hair daily withered and decayed:
His ears and eyes gradually lost their keenness.
One morning he suffered the Common Change
And his body was one with the dust and dirt of the hill.
Gods and fairies! If indeed such things there be,
Their ways are beyond the striving of mortal men.
If you have not on your skull the Golden Bump's protrusion,
If your name is absent from the rolls of the Red Terrace,
In vain you learn the "Method of Avoiding Food":
For naught you study the "Book of Alchemic Lore. "
Though you sweat and toil, what shall your trouble bring?
You will only shorten the five-score years of your span.
Sad, alas, the man who dreamt of Fairies!
For a single dream spoiled his whole life.
[62] _I. e. _, the Immortals.
MAGIC
Boundless, the great sea.
Straight down,--no bottom: sideways,--no border.
Of cloudy waves and misty billows down in the uttermost depths
Men have fabled, in the midst there stand three sacred hills.
On the hills, thick growing,--herbs that banish Death.
Wings grow on those who eat them and they turn into heavenly "hsien. "
The Lord of Ch'in[63] and Wu of Han[64] believed in these stories:
And magic-workers year by year were sent to gather the herbs.
The Blessed Islands, now and of old, what but an empty tale?
The misty waters spread before them and they knew not where to seek.
Boundless, the great sea.
Dauntless, the mighty wind.
Their eyes search but cannot see the shores of the Blessed Islands.
They cannot find the Blessed Isles and yet they dare not return:
Youths and maidens that began the quest grew grey on board the boat.
They found that the writings of Hsu[65] were all boasts and lies:
To the Lofty Principle and Great Unity in vain they raised their
prayers.
Do you not see
The graves on the top of Black Horse Hill[66] and the tombs at
Mo-ling? [67]
What is left but the sighing wind blowing in the tangled grasses?
Yes, and what is more,
The Dark and Primal Master of Sages in his five thousand words[68]
Never spoke of herbs,
Never spoke of "hsien,"
Nor spoke of soaring in broad daylight up to the blue heaven.
[63] The "First Emperor," 259-210 B. C.
[64] Wu Ti, 156-87 B. C.
[65] Ssu Shih. Giles, 1276.
[66] The burial-places of these two Emperors.
[67] _Ibid.
