Chapter 6

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.

His other poem of sentiment, the “Lute Girl,”[48]accords even less with his stated principles. With these he ranks hisLü-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 Hsün-yang,” “Pruning Trees,” etc. These are all in the old style.

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-yü 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 theLü-shih. “The world,” writes Po to Yüan Chēn, “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. Yüan 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 Nō Play and has even become a kind of Shintō 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.

[45]Yüan 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.”

[46]Famous for its rock-sculptures, carved in the sixth and seventh centuries.

[47]Giles, “Chinese Literature,” p. 169.

[48]Giles, “Chinese Literature,” p. 165.

At Ch’ang-an—a full foot of snow;A levée 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’angOn 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 ValleyAnd secretly envied Ch’ēn Chü-shih,In warm bed-socks dozing beneath the rugsAnd not getting up till the sun has mounted the sky.

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 WestAnd thought I was staying at the Hsien-yu Temple.[49]When I woke and heard the dripping of the Palace clockI still thought it the murmur of a mountain stream.

[49]Where the poet used to spend his holidays.

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.

Preface:—After I parted with Yüan Chēn, 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 thepaulovniaflower.

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 handAnd asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.Andyousaid: “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-chouHad 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 spaceThere was no room left to talk about the weather!But you said that when you wroteYou were staying for the night to the east of Shang-chou;Sitting alone, lighted by a solitary candleLodging in the mountain hostel of Yang-Ch’ēng.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 purplepaulovniaflowers—Paulovnia flowers just on the point of fallingAre 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 thoughtsAnd 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 wordsThat each letter changes into a bar of gold!

(CircaA.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’ēn 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.

When I was almost fortyI 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 hillsMust now be postponed for fifteen years!

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 diedShe lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,ThenI know that the ties of flesh and bloodOnly 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 passedAnd 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.

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 bedHave changed into little birds and flown away.The worm that then lay hidden in its holeHas hatched into a cricket sitting on the tree.The Four Seasons go on for ever and ever:In all Nature nothing stops to restEven for a moment. Only the sick man’s heartDeep down still aches as of old!

[51]The epidendrum.

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” adviceWhen the dragon comes, ah!The wind stirs and sighsPaper 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]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 yeartheyshould 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?

When the dragon comes, ah!The wind stirs and sighsPaper 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]

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 yeartheyshould 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?

[52]Parody of a famous Han dynasty hymn.

Writtencirca812, 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 menThat “good and ill follow in an endless chain.”And to-day it ought to set my heart at restTo return to others the corn in my great barn.

In the land of Tao-chouMany 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 yetThat parted men from those they loved, never to meet again!Old men—weeping for their grandsons; mothers for their children!One day—Yang Ch’ēng 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 liveI only find dwarfishpeople; no dwarfishslaves.”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-chouStill enjoy this gift.And even now when they speak of the GovernorTears 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.

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]

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 singers have hushed their notes of clear song:The red sleeves of the dancers are motionless.Hugging his lute, the old harper of ChaoRocks 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 yü.[54]And those who sit and listen to the tune he playsOf 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 menShould love the modern and not love the old.Thus it is that the harp in the green windowDay by day is covered deeper with dust.

Alas, alas that the ears of common menShould love the modern and not love the old.Thus it is that the harp in the green windowDay by day is covered deeper with dust.

[54]Tonic, dominant and superdominant of the ancient five-note scale.

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 labourerWho 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 flowersWould pay the taxes of ten poor houses.”

Written inA.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 Yüeh.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,“Yoursorrows are none at all compared withmysorrows.”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-yüan.[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-yüan 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-chün, a Chinese girl who in 33B.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.

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 mudWould dirty his horse’s hoofs.The Chancellor’s horse’s hoofsStepped on the gravel and remained perfectly clean;But the bull employed in dragging the cartWas almost sweating blood.The Assistant Chancellor’s businessIs to “save men, govern the countryAnd harmonize Yin and Yang.”[61]Whether the bull’s neck is soreNeed not trouble him at all.

[61]The negative and positive principles in nature.

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 à 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 sweptIn long procession to the Palace of the Jade City.How should he guess that the children of Tzŭ-mēn[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 yearsAnd 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 yearsDaily 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 ChangeAnd 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.

Boundless, the great sea.Straight down,—no bottom: sideways,—no border.Of cloudy waves and misty billows down in the uttermost depthsMen 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 Hsü[65]were all boasts and lies:To the Lofty Principle and Great Unity in vain they raised their prayers.Do you not seeThe 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.

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