Various authors

“ To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious — a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions. These he reserves entirely for friendship.
Accordingly we find that while our poets tend to lay stress on physical courage and other qualities which normal women admire, Po Chü-i is not ashamed to write such a poem as "Alarm at entering the Gorges." Our poets imagine themselves very much as Art has portrayed them — bare-headed and wild-eyed, with shirts unbuttoned at the neck as though they feared that a seizure of emotion might at any minute suffocate them. ”

“ Poetry became the medium not for the expression of a poet's emotions, but for the display of his classical attainments. The great Li Po is no exception to this rule. Often where his translators would make us suppose he is expressing a fancy of his own, he is in reality skilfully utilizing some poem by T'ao Ch'ien or Hsieh Ti'ao. ”

“ I have spoken hitherto only of poets. But the poetess occupies a place of considerable importance in the first four centuries of our era, though the classical period [T'ang and Sung] produced no great woman writer. Her theme varies little; she is almost always a "rejected wife," cast adrift by her lord or sent back to her home. Probably her father would be unable to buy her another husband and there was no place for unmarried women in the Chinese social system. The moment, then, which produced such poems was one of supreme tragedy in a woman's life. ”

“ In all languages some vowel-sounds are shorter than others and, in certain cases, two consecutive words begin with the same sound. Other such characteristics could be enumerated, but for the purposes of poetry it is these elements which man has principally exploited.
English poetry has used chiefly rhyme, stress, and alliteration. It is doubtful if tone has ever played a part; a conscious use has sporadically been made of quantity. Poetry naturally utilizes the most marked and definite characteristics of the language in which it is written. ”

“ The expedients consciously used by the Chinese before the sixth century were rhyme and length of line. A third element, inherent in the language, was not exploited before that date, but must always have been a factor in instinctive considerations of euphony. This element was "tone."
Chinese prosody distinguishes between two tones, a "flat" and a "deflected." In the first the syllable is enunciated in a level manner: the voice neither rises nor sinks. In the second, it [1] rises, [2] sinks, [3] is abruptly arrested. These varieties make up the Four Tones of Classical Chinese. ”

“ It has been the habit of Europe to idealize love at the expense of friendship and so to place too heavy a burden on the relation of man and woman. The Chinese erred in the opposite direction, regarding their wives and concubines simply as instruments of procreation. ”

“ In such poems as the "Ssech'uan Road," with its wild profusion of long and short lines, its cataract of exotic verbiage, he aimed at something nearer akin to music than to poetry. Tu Fu, his contemporary, occasionally abandoned the cult of "abstract form." Both poets lived through the most tragic period of Chinese history. In 755 the Emperor's Turkic favourite, An Lu-shan, revolted against his master. A civil war followed, in which China lost thirty million men. The dynasty was permanently enfeebled and the Empire greatly curtailed by foreign incursions. ”

“ It occurred to the intellectuals of China that they would be happier growing vegetables in their gardens than place-hunting at Nanking. They embraced the theory that "by bringing himself into harmony with Nature" man can escape every evil. ”

“ The Chinese have always [and rightly] despised the literature of this period, which is "all flowers and moonlight." A few individual writers, such as Pao Chao, stand out as exceptions. The Emperor Yüan-ti — who hacked his way to the throne by murdering all other claimants, including his own brother — is typical of the period both as a man and as a poet. A specimen of his sentimental poetry will be found on page 135. When at last forced to abdicate, he heaped together 200,000 books and pictures; and, setting fire to them, exclaimed: "The culture of the Liang dynasty perishes with me." ”

“ At this period of his life Po made friends with difficulty, not being, as he tells us "a master of such accomplishments as caligraphy, painting, chess or gambling, which tend to bring men together in pleasurable intercourse." ”

“ But this popularity was confined to the long, romantic poems and the Lü-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 ”

“ It would not be an exaggeration to say that half the poems in the Chinese language are poems of parting or separation.
Readers of these translations may imagine that the culture represented by Po Chü-i extended over the whole vast confines of China. This would, I think, be an error. Culture is essentially a metropolitan product. ”

“ It was natural that this change should be reflected in Chinese prosody. A certain Shēn Yo [A. D. 441–513] first propounded the laws of tone-succession in poetry. From that time till the eighth century the Lü-shih or "strictly regulated poem" gradually evolved. But poets continued [and continue till to-day] , side by side with their lü-shih, to write in the old metre which disregards tone, calling such poems Ku shih, "old poems." Previous European statements about Chinese prosody should be accepted with great caution. Writers have attempted to define the lü-shih with far too great precision. ”

“ Yüan Chēn is banished to Ching-mēn.
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 Wuchēn Temple." Soon after his return to Ch'ang-an, which took place in the winter of 814, he fell into official disfavour. ”

“ 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 Yüan Chēn also died.
Henceforth, though for thirteen years he continued to hold nominal posts, he lived a life of retirement. ”

“ With these he ranks his Lü-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." ”

“ He would have us think of him as a boon companion, a great drinker of wine, who will not disgrace a social gathering by quitting it sober.
To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. ”

“ Three like tones only come together when divided by a "cesura," e.g., the line BB/AAA would be avoided, but not the line BBAA/ABB.
[d] Verbal parallelism in the couplet, e.g.:
After long illness one first realizes that seeking medicines is a mistake ”