L. Cranmer-Byng

“ A deep simplicity touching many hidden springs, a profound regard for the noble uses of leisure, things which modern critics of life have taught us to despise — these are the technique and the composition and colour of all their work.
Complete surrender to a particular mood until the mood itself surrenders to the artist, and afterwards silent ceaseless toil until a form worthy of its expression has been achieved — this is the method of Li Po and his fellows. And as for leisure, it means life with all its possibilities of beauty and romance. The artist is ever saying, "Stay a little while! ”

“ Yet apart from all transitory passions and the ephemeral results of mortal love, the song of the Taoist lover soars unstained, untrammelled. Man attains not by himself, nor woman by herself, but, like the one-winged birds of the Chinese legend, they must rise together. To be a great lover is to be a great mystic, since in the highest conception of mortal beauty that the mind can form there lies always the unattainable, the unpossessed, suggesting the world of beauty and finality beyond our mortal reach. ”

“ Li Po was a poet with a sword by his side. He would have ruffled bravely with our Elizabethans, and for a Chinese is strangely warlike in sentiment. How he loves the bravo of Chao with his sabre from the Chinese Sheffield of Wu, "with the surface smooth as ice and dazzling as snow, with his saddle broidered with silver upon his white steed; who when he passes, swift as the wind, may be said to resemble a shooting star!" ”

“ He was not a great ruler, but an artist stifled in ceremony and lost in statecraft. Yet what Emperor could escape immortality who had Tu Fu and Li Po for contemporaries, Ch`ang-an for his capital, and T`ai Chen of a thousand songs to wife? Poet and sportsman, mystic and man of this world, a great polo player, and the passionate lover of one beautiful woman whose ill-starred fate inspired Po Chu-i, the tenderest of all their singers,** Ming Huang is more to literature than to history. Of his life and times the poets are faithful recorders. ”

“ Yes, the conscience is clear and the song is clear, and so these little streams flow on, shining in the clear dawn of a golden past to which all poets and philosophers to come will turn with wistful eyes. These early ballads of the Chinese differ in feeling from almost all the ballad literature of the world. They are ballads of peace, while those of other nations are so often war-songs and the remembrances of brave deeds. ”

“ Subtly connecting the arts, they were at once painters and poets, musicians and singers. And because they were philosophers and seekers after the beauty that underlies the form of things, they made the picture express its own significance, and every song find echo in the souls of those that heard. You will find no tedium of repetition in all their poetry, no thin vein of thought beaten out over endless pages. ”

“ We can imagine this bold, careless, impulsive artist, with his moments of great exaltation and alternate depression, a kind of Chinese Paul Verlaine, with his sensitive mind of a child, always recording impressions as they come. T`ai Chen the beautiful and the grim frontiersman are alike faithfully portrayed. He lives for the moment, and the moment is often wine-flushed like the rosy glow of dawn, or grey and wan as the twilight of a hopeless day. ”

“ Yet solitude and the picturesque cannot hold him for long, nor even the ardours of the chase. Po Chu-i is above all the poet of human love and sorrow, and beyond all the consoler. Those who profess to find pessimism in the Chinese character must leave him alone. At the end of the great tragedy of "The Never-ending Wrong" a whispered message of hope is borne to the lonely soul beating against the confines of the visible world: —
"Tell my lord," she murmured, "to be firm of heart as this gold and enamel; then in heaven or earth below we twain may meet once more." ”

“ Only one great name stands between them and the poets of the T`ang dynasty — the name of T`ao Ch`ien (A.D. 365-427) , whose exquisite allegory "The Peach Blossom Fountain" is quoted by Professor Giles in his `Chinese Literature'. The philosophy of this ancient poet appears to have been that of Horace. `Carpe diem!'
"Ah, how short a time it is that we are here! Why then not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether we remain or go? What boots it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts? I want not wealth; I want not power: heaven is beyond my hopes. ”

“ One of the great philosopher-poets of the Taoist school. His life was spent far from the court and away from the sounds of civil warfare, in the endeavour to set himself in harmony with the universe — to become, in fact, like an Aeolian harp through which all the cords of nature might sweep at will. How far he attained the end desired may be seen in his work, which is penetrated by a sense of profound beauty, recalling the quiet twilight upon the mountain-side, which he so well describes. ”

“ Yet there has always been this essential difference between them, that while the Buddhist regards the senses as windows looking out upon unreality and mirage, to the Taoist they are doors through which the freed soul rushes to mingle with the colours and tones and contours of the universe. Both Buddha and Lao Tzu are poets, one listening to the rhythm of infinite sorrow, one to the rhythm of infinite joy. Neither knows anything of reward at the hands of men or angels. ”

“ It is one of the accomplishments which no man of education would be found lacking. Colonel Cheng-Ki-Tong, in his delightful book `The Chinese Painted by Themselves', says: "Poetry has been in China, as in Greece, the language of the gods. It was poetry that inculcated laws and maxims; it was by the harmony of its lines that traditions were handed down at a time when memory had to supply the place of writing; and it was the first language of wisdom and of inspiration." ”

“ The tired woodman seeks his cot
That twinkles up the hill;
And sleep has touched the wanderers
That sang the twilight still.
To-night — ah! beauty of to-night
I need my friend to praise,
So take the lute to lure him on
Through the fragrant, dew-lit ways. ”

“ Death is drumming at the door.
— * Pronounced `hareem'. —
Flight
Clouds upon clouds of dust enveloping
The lofty gates of the proud capital.
On, on, to the south-west, a living wall,
Ten thousand battle-chariots on the wing.
Feathers and jewels flashing through the cloud
Onwards, and then an halt. The legions wait
A hundred li beyond the western gate;
The great walls loom behind them wrapt in cloud.
No further stirs the sullen soldiery,
Naught but the last dread office can avail,
Till she of the dark moth-eyebrows, lily pale,
Shines through tall avenues of spears to die. ”

“ Perhaps these Odes may best be compared with the little craftless figures in an early age of pottery, when the fragrance of the soil yet lingered about the rough clay. The maker of the song was a poet, and knew it not. The maker of the bowl was an artist, and knew it not. You will get no finish from either — the lines are often blurred, the design but half fulfilled; and yet the effect is not inartistic. It has been well said that greatness is but another name for interpretation ”

“ Here is reality emerging from the unreal, spring renewing, love and beauty triumphant over death and decay. The girl is the central type and symbol. From her laughing eyes a thousand dead women look out once more on spring, through her poets find their inspiration. Beauty is the key that unlocks the secrets of the frozen world, and brings the dead to life again.
— * `History of Chinese Literature', by Professor Herbert Giles, p. ”

“ Often a door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the halls of romance, where the reader may roam at will. With this nation of artists in emotion, the taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance; it is the aroma which remains and delights. The poems of the T`angs are full of this subtle aroma, this suggestive compelling fragrance which lingers when the songs have passed away. ”

“ Bold thought, untiring imagination, softness and harmony, make a true poem.
"One must begin with grandeur, paint everything expressed, soften the shades of those which are of least importance, collect all into one point of view, and carry the reader thither with a rapid flight."
Yet when due respect has been paid to this critic of old time, the fact still remains that concentration and suggestion are the two essentials of Chinese poetry. There is neither Iliad nor Odyssey to be found in the libraries of the Chinese ”

“ The neutral tint is better adapted to the sister in whose eyes all things are Maya — illusion. The shimmer of pearl belongs of right to her whose soul reflects the colour and quiet radiance of a thousand dreams. Compassion urged the one, the love of harmony led the other. ”

“ His return to the place of tragedy, and on to the capital where the deserted palace awaits him with its memories, his endless seeking for the soul of his beloved, her discovery by the priest of Tao in that island of P`eng Lai where —
gaily coloured towers Rise up like rainbow clouds, and many gentle And beautiful Immortals pass their days in peace,
her message to her lover with its splendid triumphant note of faith foretelling their reunion at the last — in fine, the story of their love with the grave between them — is due to the genius of Po Chu-i. ”

“ To make a good poem, the subject must be interesting, and treated in an attractive manner; genius must shine throughout the whole, and be supported by a graceful, brilliant, and sublime style. The poet ought to traverse, with a rapid flight, the lofty regions of philosophy, without deviating from the narrow way of truth. ”

“ And once the soul is set free, there is no need for painful aimless wanderings, no need for Mahomet to go to the Mountain, for resting in the centre of all things the universe will be our home and our share in the secrets of the World-Builder will be made known. ”

“ For him, Time and Space no longer exist, and by "concentration"
he is able to communicate with the beloved, and
Sweet words falter to and fro —
Though the great River rolls between.
Ssu-K`ung T`u, more than any poet, teaches how unreal are the apparent limitations of man. "He is the peer of heaven and earth"; "A co-worker in Divine transformation". With his keen vision the poet sees things in a glance and paints them in a single line, and in the poem as a whole you get the sense of beauty beyond beauty, as though the seer had looked into a world that underlay the world of form. ”

“ Now leans she from the tower in moonlight pale.
A flower-girt branch grows sweeter from the dew.
A spirit of snow and rain unheeded calls.
Who wakes to memory in these palace walls?
Fei-yen!* — but in the robes an Empress knew.
The most renowned of blossoms, most divine
Of those whose conquering glances overthrow
Cities and kingdoms, for his sake combine
And win the ready smiles that ever flow
From royal lips. What matter if the snow
Blot out the garden? She shall still recline
Upon the scented balustrade and glow
With spring that thrills her warm blood into wine. ”

“ What is life but the flower or the fruit which falls when ripe, yet ever fears the untimely frost? Once born, there is naught but sorrow; for who is there can escape death? From the first moment of life, the result of passionate love and desire, there is nought but the bodily form transitional as the lightning flash. ”

“ As though before the gold of autumn's fall,
Before the glow of the moon-flooded skies.
Tranquil Repose
It dwells in the quiet silence,
Unseen upon hill and plain,
'Tis lapped by the tideless harmonies,
It soars with the lonely crane.
As the springtime breeze whose flutter
The silken skirts hath blown,
As the wind-drawn note of the bamboo flute
Whose charm we would make our own, —
Chance-met, it seems to surrender ”