“ To be suddenly introduced to a new and magnificent literature, not through the medium of the usual more or less accurate translation, but directly, as one might burrow it out for one's self with the aid of a dictionary, is an exciting and inspiring thing. The method we adopted made this possible, as I shall attempt to show. The study of Chinese is so difficult that it is a life-work in itself, so is the study of poetry. A sinologue has no time to learn how to write poetry; a poet has no time to learn how to read Chinese. ”

“ PASSIONATE GRIEF BY LI T'AI-PO
Beautiful is this woman who rolls up the pearl-reed blind.
She sits in an inner chamber,
And her eyebrows, delicate as a moth's antennæ,
Are drawn with grief.
One sees only the wet lines of tears.
For whom does she suffer this misery?
We do not know.
[92]
SUNG TO THE AIR: "THE MANTZŬ LIKE AN IDOL" BY LI T'AI-PO
The trees in the level forest stand in rows and rows,
The mist weaves through them.
The jade-green of the cold hillside country hurts one's heart.
Night colour drifts into the high cupola.
In the cupola, a man grieves. ”

“ The House of Ch'in erected and pounded firm the wall to make a barrier before the dwelling-place of the Barbarians,
The House of Han still preserved the beacon-stands where fires are lighted.
The lighting of beacon fires on the stands never ceases,
The fighting and attacking are without a time of ending.
In savage attack they die—fighting without arms.
The riderless horses scream with terror, throwing their heads up to the sky.
Vultures and kites tear the bowels of men with their beaks [25]
And fly to hang them on the branches of dead trees. ”

“ Plum-trees flower even while the rare snow-falls turn the ground white, and soon after the New Year, the moment when, according to the Chinese calendar, Spring "opens," the fields are pink with peach-bloom, and gold with rape-blossom, while the air is sweetly scented by the flowers of the beans sown the Autumn before. Walls and fences are unknown, only low ridges divide the various properties, and the little houses of the farmers are built closely together in groups, as a rule to the South of a bamboo copse which acts as a screen against the Northeast winds prevailing during the Winter ”

“ WRITTEN IN EARLY AUTUMN AT THE POOL OF SPRINKLING WATER BY CHAO TI OF HAN, THE "BRIGHT EMPEROR"
In Autumn, when the landscape is clear, to float over the wide, water ripples,
To pick the water-chestnut and the lotus-flower with a quick, light hand!
The fresh wind is cool, we start singing to the movement of the oars.
The clouds are bright; they part before the light of dawn; the moon has sunk below the Silver River.
Enjoying such pleasure for ten thousand years—
Could one consider it too much?
[141]
PROCLAIMING THE JOY OF CERTAIN HOURS BY THE EMPEROR LING OF (LATER) HAN
Cool wind rising. ”

“ Miss Lowell's rendering of the line was:
"On their heights, the wind whistles awesomely in the pines; it booms in great, long gusts; it clashes like the strings of a jade-stone psaltery; it shouts on the clearness of a gale."
Can any one doubt that this was just the effect that the Chinese poet wished to achieve, and did achieve by means of the overtones given in his characters?
Another, simpler, example is in a case where the Chinese poet speaks of a rising sun. There are many characters which denote sunrise, and each has some shade of difference from every other. ”

“ Although several great sinologues have written on the subject of Chinese poetry, none, so far as I am aware, has devoted his exclusive attention to the poetic style, nor has any translator availed himself of the assistance, so essential to success, of a poet—that is, one trained in the art of seizing the poetic values in fine shades of meaning. Without this power, which amounts to an instinct, no one can hope to reproduce any poetry in another tongue, and how much truer this is of Chinese poetry can only be realized by those who have some knowledge of the language. ”

“ Profoundest grief which can so wound a person
And turn the black cloud head-dress to frosted thistledown!
If, for one day, our desires be not satisfied,
Verily the things of the world are nothing.
Change the duck-feather dress for sweet wine,
Cease to embroider dragons on the dresses for the wu dance.
She is chilly with bitterness,
Words cannot be endured.
For one's Lord one plays the table-lute of wu-t'ung wood with strings of silk,
But when one's bowels are torn with grief, the strings also break. [65]
Grief in the heart at night is anguish and despair. ”

“ CROSSING THE FRONTIER BY TU FU
II
At dawn, the conscripted soldiers enter the camp outside the Eastern Gate.
At sunset, they cross the bridge of Ho Yang.
The setting sunlight is reflected on the great flags.
Horses neigh. The wind whines—whines—
Ten thousand tents are spread along the level sand.
Officers instruct their companies.
The bright moon hangs in the middle of the sky.
The written orders are strict that the night shall be still and empty.
Sadness everywhere. A few sounds from a Mongol flageolet jar the air.
The strong soldiers are no longer proud, they quiver with sadness. ”

“ Dead and uprooted pine-trees hang over sheer cliffs.
Flying waterfalls and rolling torrents outdo one another in clamour and confusion;
They dash against the perpendicular walls, whirl round ten thousand rocks, and boom like thunder along the ravines.
This is what the Two-Edged Sword Mountains are like! [8]
Alas! How endless a road for man to undertake! How came he to attempt it!
The Terraced Road of the Two-Edged Sword twists between glittering and rocky summits.
One man alone could hold it against a thousand and mow them down like grass. ”

“ Do you not see, in the clear mirror of the Guest Hall, the miserable white hair on my head?
At dawn it is like shining thread, but at sunset it is snow.
In this life, to be perfectly happy, one must drain one's pleasures;
The golden wine-cup must not stand empty opposite the moon. ”

“ THE EXCURSION A NUMBER OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN OF RANK, ACCOMPANIED
BY SINGING-GIRLS, GO OUT TO ENJOY THE COOL OF
EVENING. THEY ENCOUNTER A SHOWER OF RAIN
BY TU FU
I
How delightful, at sunset, to loosen the boat!
A light wind is slow to raise waves.
Deep in the bamboo grove, the guests linger;
The lotus-flowers are pure and bright in the cool evening air.
The young nobles stir the ice-water;
The Beautiful Ones wash the lotus-roots, whose fibres are like silk threads.
A layer of clouds above our heads is black. ”

“ The river is the colour of Autumn.
The wind passes—passes. The night is endless—endless.
I would go to the end of the Dark Sea. How eagerly I desire this!
I think much of fishing for a leviathan from the Island of the Cold Sea. [31]
There is no rod long enough to raise it.
I yield to the great waves, and my sorrow is increased.
I will return. I will go home. Oh-h-h-h-h!
Even for a little time, one cannot rely upon the World.
I long to pick the immortal herbs on the hill of P'êng.
[32]
POIGNANT GRIEF DURING A SUNNY SPRING BY LI T'AI-PO
The East wind has come again. ”

“ The Chinese poet starts talking in the most ordinary language and voices the most ordinary things, and his poetry seems to happen suddenly out of the commonplace as if it were some beautiful action happening in the routine of actual life. ”

“ Merely to pronounce a word must be, in such a case, to see it and realize, half-unconsciously perhaps, its various parts. Even if half-unconscious, the nuances of meaning conveyed by them must have hung about the spoken word and given it a distinct flavour which, without them, would be absent.
Now what is a translator to do? Shall he render the word in the flat, dictionary sense, or shall he permit himself to add to it what it conveys to an educated Chinese? Clearly neither the one nor the other in all cases; but one or the other, which the context must determine. ”

“ Li T'ai-po's poetry is full of dash and surprise. At his best, there is an extraordinary exhilaration in his work; at his worst, he is merely repetitive. Chinese critics have complained that his subjects are all too apt to be trivial, and that his range is narrow. This is quite true; poems of farewell, deserted ladies sighing for their absent lords, officials consumed by homesickness, pæans of praise for wine—in the aggregate there are too many of these. But how fine they often are! ”

“ Mist hangs over the deep river pools and floats down gently, gently, with the current.
Behind me, through the trees, the moon is sinking.
The business of the world is a swiftly moving space of water, a rushing, spreading water.
I am content to be an old man holding a bamboo fishing-rod. ”

“ Besides the house proper, there are numerous structures erected in gardens, for the Chinese spend much of their time in their gardens. No nation is more passionately fond of nature, whether in its grander aspects, or in the charming arrangements of potted flowers which take the place of our borders in their pleasure grounds. Among these outdoor buildings none is more difficult to describe than the lou, since we have nothing which exactly corresponds to it. Lous appear again and again in Chinese poetry, but just what to call them in English is a puzzle. ”

“ As travel has always been very popular, every conceivable form of water-borne craft has sprung up, and these the poets constantly used as they went from the capital to take up their official posts, or from the house of one patron to another, the ancient custom being for the rich to entertain and support men of letters with whom they "drank wine and recited verses," the pastime most dear to their hearts. The innumerable poems of farewell found among the works of all Chinese poets were usually written as parting gifts from the authors to their hosts. ”

“ Again, in the moonlight, he bends over his table-lute and plays,
His hands follow his thoughts, for there are no strings.
When a guest comes, it is wine alone which he pours out.
He is the best of officials, since he does not care for gold. ”

“ Very early in our studies, we realized that the component parts of the Chinese written character counted for more in the composition of poetry than has generally been recognized; that the poet chose one character rather than another which meant practically the same thing, because [viii] of the descriptive allusion in the make-up of that particular character; that the poem was enriched precisely through this undercurrent of meaning in the structure of its characters. But not always—and here was the difficulty. Usually the character must be taken merely as the word it had been created to mean. ”

“ Rhyme does exist, but there are only a little over a hundred rhymes, as tone inflection does not change a word in that particular. Such a paucity of rhyme would seriously affect the richness of any poetry, if again the Chinese had not overcome this lingual defect by the employment of a juxtaposing pattern made up of their four poetic tones. And these tones come to the rescue once more when we consider the question of rhythm. Monosyllables in themselves always produce a staccato effect, which tends to make all rhythm composed of them monotonous, if, indeed, it does not destroy it altogether. ”

“ The curious thing is that these examinations were purely literary. They consisted not only in knowing thoroughly the classics of the past, but in being able to recite long passages from them by heart, and with this was included the ability to write one's self, not merely in prose, but in poetry. Every one in office had to be, perforce, a poet. No one could hope to be the mayor of a town or the governor of a province unless he had attained a high proficiency in the art of poetry. ”

“ The reed-blind is rolled high, and I gaze at the beautiful, glittering, primeval snow,
Whitening the distance, confusing the stone steps and the courtyard.
The air is filled with its shining, it blows far out like the smoke of a furnace.
The grass-blades are cold and white, like jade girdle pendants.
Surely the Immortals in Heaven must be crazy with wine to cause such disorder,
Seizing the white clouds, crumpling them up, destroying them.
[12]
THE PLEASURES WITHIN THE PALACE BY LI T'AI-PO
From little, little girls, they have lived in the Golden House. ”

“ English writers on Chinese literature are fond of announcing that Li T'ai-po is China's greatest poet; the Chinese themselves, however, award this place to Tu Fu. We may put it that Li T'ai-po was the people's poet, and Tu Fu the poet of scholars. As Po Chü-i is represented here by only one poem, no account of his life has been given. A short biography of him may be found in Mr. Waley's "A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems."
It is permitted to very few to live in the hearts of their countrymen as Li T'ai-po has lived in the hearts of the Chinese. ”

“ The Yellow River, which in the old mythology was said to have its source in the Milky Way (in the native idiom, "Cloudy" or "Silver River") , really rises in the K'un Lun Mountains of Central Asia; from thence its course lies through the country supposed to have been the cradle of the Chinese race. It is constantly referred to in poetry, as is also its one considerable tributary, the Wei River, or "Wei Water," its literal name. The Yellow River is not navigable for important craft, and running as it does through sandy loess constantly changes its course with the most disastrous consequences. ”