in 1707, contains 48,900 poems of all kinds, arranged in 900 books,
and filling thirty good-sized volumes. Some Chinese writers divide
the dynasty into three poetical periods, called Early, Glorious, and
Late; and they profess to detect in the works assigned to each the
corresponding characteristics of growth, fulness, and decay. Others
insert a Middle period between the last two, making four periods in
all. For general purposes, however, it is only necessary to state,
that since the age of the Hans the meanings of words had gradually
come to be more definitely fixed, and the structural arrangement more
uniform and more polished. Imagination began to come more freely into
play, and the language to flow more easily and more musically, as
though responsive to the demands of art. A Chinese poem is at best
a hard nut to crack, expressed as it usually is in lines of five or
seven monosyllabic root-ideas, without inflection, agglutination, or
grammatical indication of any kind, the connection between which has
to be inferred by the reader from the logic, from the context, and
least perhaps of all from the syntactical arrangement of the words.
Then, again, the poet is hampered not only by rhyme but also by tone.
For purposes of poetry the characters in the Chinese language are all
ranged under two tones, as _flats_ and _sharps_, and these occupy
fixed positions just as dactyls, spondees, trochees, and anapæsts in
the construction of Latin verse. As a consequence, the natural order
of words is often entirely sacrificed to the exigencies of tone, thus
making it more difficult than ever for the reader to grasp the sense.
In a stanza of the ordinary five-character length the following tonal
arrangement would appear:--
_Sharp sharp flat flat sharp
Flat flat sharp sharp flat
Flat flat flat sharp sharp
Sharp sharp sharp flat flat._
The effect produced by these tones is very marked and pleasing to
the ear, and often makes up for the faultiness of the rhymes, which
are simply the rhymes of the Odes as heard 2500 years ago, many of
them of course being no longer rhymes at all. Thus, there is as much
artificiality about a stanza of Chinese verse as there is about an
Alcaic stanza in Latin. But in the hands of the most gifted this
artificiality is altogether concealed by art, and the very trammels
of tone and rhyme become transfigured, and seem to be necessary
aids and adjuncts to success. Many works have been published to
guide the student in his admittedly difficult task. The first rule
in one of these seems so comprehensive as to make further perusal
quite unnecessary. It runs thus:--“Discard commonplace form; discard
commonplace ideas; discard commonplace phrasing; discard commonplace
words; discard commonplace rhymes.”
A long poem does not appeal to the Chinese mind. There is no such thing
as an epic in the language, though, of course, there are many pieces
extending to several hundred lines. Brevity is indeed the soul of a
Chinese poem, which is valued not so much for what it says as for what
it suggests. As in painting, so in poetry suggestion is the end and aim
of the artist, who in each case may be styled an impressionist. The
ideal length is twelve lines, and this is the limit set to candidates
at the great public examinations at the present day, the Chinese
holding that if a poet cannot say within such compass what he has to
say it may very well be left unsaid. The eight-line poem is also a
favourite, and so, but for its extreme difficulty, is the four-line
epigram, or “stop-short,” so called because of its abruptness, though,
as the critics explain, “it is only the words which stop, the sense
goes on,” some train of thought having been suggested to the reader.
The latter form of verse was in use so far back as the Han dynasty, but
only reached perfection under the Tangs. Although consisting of only
twenty or twenty-eight words, according to the measure employed, it is
just long enough for the poet to introduce, to develop, to embellish,
and to conclude his theme in accordance with certain established laws
of composition. The third line is considered the most troublesome to
produce, some poets even writing it first; the last line should contain
a “surprise” or _dénouement_. We are, in fact, reminded of the old
formula, “Omne epigramma sit instar apis,” &c., better known in its
English dress:--
“_The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
In an epigram never should fail;
The body should always be little and sweet,
And a sting should be left in the tail._”
The following is an early specimen, by an anonymous writer, of the
four-line poem:--
“_The bright moon shining overhead,
The stream beneath the breeze’s touch,
Are pure and perfect joys indeed,--
But few are they who think them such._”
Turning now to the almost endless list of poets from which but a scanty
selection can be made, we may begin with WANG PO (A.D. 648-676), a
precocious boy who wrote verses when he was six. He took his degree
at sixteen, and was employed in the Historical Department, but was
dismissed for satirising the cock-fighting propensities of the Imperial
princes. He filled up his leisure by composing many beautiful poems.
He never meditated on these beforehand, but after having prepared a
quantity of ink ready for use, he would drink himself tipsy and lie
down with his face covered up. On waking he would seize his pen and
write off verses, not a word in which needed to be changed; whence
he acquired the sobriquet of Belly-Draft, meaning that his drafts,
or rough copies, were all prepared inside. And he received so many
presents of valuable silks for writing these odes, that it was said “he
spun with his mind.” These lines are from his pen:--
“_Near these islands a palace
was built by a prince,
But its music and song
have departed long since;
The hill-mists of morning
sweep down on the halls,
At night the red curtains
lie furled on the walls.
The clouds o’er the water
their shadows still cast,
Things change like the stars:
how few autumns have passed
And yet where is that prince?
where is he?--No reply,
Save the plash of the stream
rolling ceaselessly by._”
[Sidenote: CH’ÊN TZŬ-ANG]
A still more famous contemporary of his was CH’ÊN TZŬ-ANG (A.D.
656-698), who adopted somewhat sensational means of bringing himself to
the notice of the public. He purchased a very expensive guitar which
had been for a long time on sale, and then let it be known that on the
following day he would perform upon it in public. This attracted a
large crowd; but when Ch‘ên arrived he informed his auditors that he
had something in his pocket worth much more than the guitar. Thereupon
he dashed the instrument into a thousand pieces, and forthwith began
handing round copies of his own writings. Here is a sample, directed
against the Buddhist worship of idols, the “Prophet” representing any
divinely-inspired teacher of the Confucian school:--
“_On Self the Prophet never rests his eye,
His to relieve the doom of humankind;
No fairy palaces beyond the sky,
Rewards to come, are present to his mind._
_And I have heard the faith by Buddha taught
Lauded as pure and free from earthly taint;
Why then these carved and graven idols, fraught
With gold and silver, gems, and jade, and paint?_
_The heavens that roof this earth, mountain and dale,
All that is great and grand, shall pass away;
And if the art of gods may not prevail,
Shall man’s poor handiwork escape decay?_
_Fools that ye are! In this ignoble light
The true faith fades and passes out of sight._”
As an official, Ch‘ên Tzŭ-ang once gained great _kudos_ by a truly
Solomonic decision. A man, having slain the murderer of his father,
was himself indicted for murder. Ch‘ên Tzŭ-ang caused him to be put to
death, but at the same time conferred an honorific distinction upon his
village for having produced so filial a son.
Not much is known of SUNG CHIH-WÊN (_d._ A.D. 710), at any rate to his
good. On one occasion the Emperor was so delighted with some of his
verses that he took off the Imperial robe and placed it on the poet’s
shoulders. This is one of his poems:--
“_The dust of the morn
had been laid by a shower,
And the trees by the bridge
were all covered with flower,
When a white palfrey passed
with a saddle of gold,
And a damsel as fair
as the fairest of old._
_But she veiled so discreetly
her charms from my eyes
That the boy who was with her
quite felt for my sighs;
And although not a light-o’-love
reckoned, I deem,
It was hard that this vision
should pass like a dream._”
[Sidenote: MÊNG HAO-JAN]
MÊNG HAO-JAN (A.D. 689-740) gave no sign in his youth of the genius
that was latent within him. He failed at the public examinations, and
retired to the mountains as a recluse. He then became a poet of the
first rank, and his writings were eagerly sought after. At the age of
forty he went up to the capital, and was one day conversing with his
famous contemporary, Wang Wei, when suddenly the Emperor was announced.
He hid under a couch, but Wang Wei betrayed him, the result being a
pleasant interview with his Majesty. The following is a specimen of his
verse:--
“_The sun has set behind the western slope,
The eastern moon lies mirrored in the pool;
With streaming hair my balcony I ope,
And stretch my limbs out to enjoy the cool.
Loaded with lotus-scent the breeze sweeps by,
Clear dripping drops from tall bamboos I hear,
I gaze upon my idle lute and sigh;
Alas, no sympathetic soul is near.
And so I doze, the while before mine eyes
Dear friends of other days in dream-clad forms arise._”
Equally famous as poet and physician was WANG WEI (A.D. 699-759). After
a short spell of official life, he too retired into seclusion and
occupied himself with poetry and with the consolations of Buddhism,
in which he was a firm believer. His lines on bidding adieu to Mêng
Hao-jan, when the latter was seeking refuge on the mountains, are as
follows:--
“_Dismounted, o’er wine
we had said our last say;
Then I whisper, ‘Dear friend,
tell me, whither away?’
‘Alas!’ he replied,
‘I am sick of life’s ills,
And I long for repose
on the slumbering hills.
But oh seek not to pierce
where my footsteps may stray:
The white clouds will soothe me
for ever and ay.’_”
The accompanying “stop-short” by the same writer is generally thought
to contain an effective surprise in the last line:--
“_Beneath the bamboo grove, alone,
I seize my lute and sit and croon;
No ear to hear me, save mine own:
No eye to see me--save the moon._”
Wang Wei has been accused of loose writing and incongruous pictures. A
friendly critic defends him as follows:--“For instance, there is Wang
Wei, who introduces bananas into a snow-storm. When, however, we come
to examine such points by the light of scholarship, we see that his
mind had merely passed into subjective relationship with the things
described. Fools say he did not know heat from cold.”
[Sidenote: TS’UI HAO]
A skilled poet, and a wine-bibber and gambler to boot, was TS’UI
HAO, who graduated about A.D. 730.
He wrote a poem on the Yellow-Crane pagoda which until quite recently
stood on the bank of the Yang-tsze near Hankow, and was put up to mark
the spot where Wang Tzŭ-ch‘iao, who had attained immortality, went up
to heaven in broad daylight six centuries before the Christian era. The
great Li Po once thought of writing on the theme, but he gave up the
idea so soon as he had read these lines by Ts‘ui Hao:--
“_Here a mortal once sailed
up to heaven on a crane,
And the Yellow-Crane Kiosque,
will for ever remain;
But the bird flew away
and will come back no more,
Though the white clouds are there
as the white clouds of yore._
_Away to the east
lie fair forests of trees,
From the flowers on the west
comes a scent-laden breeze,
Yet my eyes daily turn
to their far-away home,
Beyond the broad River,
its waves, and its foam._”
[Sidenote: LI PO]
By general consent LI PO himself (A.D. 705-762) would probably be
named as China’s greatest poet. His wild Bohemian life, his gay and
dissipated career at Court, his exile, and his tragic end, all combine
to form a most effective setting for the splendid flow of verse which
he never ceased to pour forth. At the early age of ten he wrote a
“stop-short” to a firefly:--
“_Rain cannot quench thy lantern’s light,
Wind makes it shine more brightly bright;
Oh why not fly to heaven afar,
And twinkle near the moon--a star?_”
Li Po began by wandering about the country, until at length, with five
other tippling poets, he retired to the mountains. For some time these
Six Idlers of the Bamboo Grove drank and wrote verses to their hearts’
content. By and by Li Po reached the capital, and on the strength of
his poetry was introduced to the Emperor as a “banished angel.” He
was received with open arms, and soon became the spoilt child of the
palace. On one occasion, when the Emperor sent for him, he was found
lying drunk in the street; and it was only after having his face well
mopped with cold water that he was fit for the Imperial presence. His
talents, however, did not fail him. With a lady of the seraglio to hold
his ink-slab, he dashed off some of his most impassioned lines; at
which the Emperor was so overcome that he made the powerful eunuch Kao
Li-shih go down on his knees and pull off the poet’s boots. On another
occasion, the Emperor, who was enjoying himself with his favourite
lady in the palace grounds, called for Li Po to commemorate the scene
in verse. After some delay the poet arrived, supported between two
eunuchs. “Please your Majesty,” he said, “I have been drinking with the
Prince and he has made me drunk, but I will do my best.” Thereupon two
of the ladies of the harem held up in front of him a pink silk screen,
and in a very short time he had thrown off no less than ten eight-line
stanzas, of which the following, describing the life of a palace
favourite, is one:--
“_Oh, the joy of youth spent
in a gold-fretted hall,
In the Crape-flower Pavilion,
the fairest of all,
My tresses for head-dress
with gay garlands girt,
Carnations arranged
o’er my jacket and skirt!
Then to wander away
in the soft-scented air,
And return by the side
of his Majesty’s chair ...
But the dance and the song
will be o’er by and by,
And we shall dislimn
like the rack in the sky._”
As time went on, Li Po fell a victim to intrigue, and left the Court in
disgrace. It was then that he wrote--
“_My whitening hair would make a long, long rope,
Yet would not fathom all my depth of woe._”
After more wanderings and much adventure, he was drowned on a journey,
from leaning one night too far over the edge of a boat in a drunken
effort to embrace the reflection of the moon. Just previously he had
indited the following lines:--
“_An arbour of flowers
and a kettle of wine:
Alas! in the bowers
no companion is mine.
Then the moon sheds her rays
on my goblet and me,
And my shadow betrays
we’re a party of three._
“_Though the moon cannot swallow
her share of the grog,
And my shadow must follow
wherever I jog,--
Yet their friendship I’ll borrow
and gaily carouse,
And laugh away sorrow
while spring-time allows._
“_See the moon,--how she glances
response to my song;
See my shadow,--it dances
so lightly along!
While sober I feel
you are both my good friends;
When drunken I reel,
our companionship ends.
But we’ll soon have a greeting
without a good-bye,
At our next merry meeting
away in the sky._”
His control of the “stop-short” is considered to be perfect:--
(1.) “_The birds have all flown to their roost in the tree,
The last cloud has just floated lazily by;
But we never tire of each other, not we,
As we sit there together,--the mountains and I._”
(2.) “_I wake, and moonbeams play around my bed,
Glittering like hoar-frost to my wondering eyes;
Up towards the glorious moon I raise my head,
Then lay me down,--and thoughts of home arise._”
The following are general extracts:--
A PARTING.
(1.) “_The river rolls crystal as clear as the sky,
To blend far away with the blue waves of ocean;
Man alone, when the hour of departure is nigh,
With the wine-cup can soothe his emotion._
“_The birds of the valley sing loud in the sun,
Where the gibbons their vigils will shortly be keeping:
I thought that with tears I had long ago done,
But now I shall never cease weeping._”
(2.) “_Homeward at dusk the clanging rookery wings its eager flight;
Then, chattering on the branches, all are pairing for the night.
Plying her busy loom, a high-born dame is sitting near,
And through the silken window-screen their voices strike her ear.
She stops, and thinks of the absent spouse she may never see again;
And late in the lonely hours of night her tears flow down like rain._”
(3.) “_What is life after all but a dream?
And why should such pother be made?
Better far to be tipsy, I deem,
And doze all day long in the shade._
“_When I wake and look out on the lawn,
I hear midst the flowers a bird sing;
I ask, ‘Is it evening or dawn?’
The mango-bird whistles, ‘’Tis spring.’_
“_Overpower’d with the beautiful sight,
Another full goblet I pour,
And would sing till the moon rises bright--
But soon I’m as drunk as before._”
(4.) “_You ask what my soul does away in the sky,
I inwardly smile but I cannot reply;
Like the peach-blossoms carried away by the stream,
I soar to a world of which you cannot dream._”
One more extract may be given, chiefly to exhibit what is held by
the Chinese to be of the very essence of real poetry,--suggestion. A
poet should not dot his i’s. The Chinese reader likes to do that for
himself, each according to his own fancy. Hence such a poem as the
following, often quoted as a model in its own particular line:--
“_A tortoise I see on a lotus-flower resting:
A bird ’mid the reeds and the rushes is nesting;
A light skiff propelled by some boatman’s fair daughter,
Whose song dies away o’er the fast-flowing water._”
[Sidenote: TU FU]
Another poet of the same epoch, of whom his countrymen are also justly
proud, is TU FU (A.D. 712-770). He failed to distinguish himself at
the public examinations, at which verse-making counts so much, but had
nevertheless such a high opinion of his own poetry that he prescribed
it as a cure for malarial fever. He finally obtained a post at Court,
which he was forced to vacate in the rebellion of 755. As he himself
wrote in political allegory--
“_Full with the freshets of the spring the torrent rushes on;
The ferry-boat swings idly, for the ferry-man is gone._”
After further vain attempts to make an official career, he took to a
wandering life, was nearly drowned by an inundation, and was compelled
to live for ten days on roots. Being rescued, he succumbed next day
to the effects of eating roast-beef and drinking white wine to excess
after so long a fast. These are some of his poems:--
(1.) “_The setting sun shines low upon my door
Ere dusk enwraps the river fringed with spring;
Sweet perfumes rise from gardens by the shore,
And smoke, where crews their boats to anchor bring._
“_Now twittering birds are roosting in the bower,
And flying insects fill the air around....
O wine, who gave to thee thy subtle power?
A thousand cares in one small goblet drowned!_”
(2.) “_A petal falls!--the spring begins to fail,
And my heart saddens with the growing gale.
Come then, ere autumn spoils bestrew the ground,
Do not forget to pass the wine-cup round.
Kingfishers build where man once laughed elate,
And now stone dragons guard his graveyard gate!
Who follows pleasure, he alone is wise;
Why waste our life in deeds of high emprise?_”
(3.) “_My home is girdled by a limpid stream,
And there in summer days life’s movements pause,
Save where some swallow flits from beam to beam,
And the wild sea-gull near and nearer draws._
“_The goodwife rules a paper board for chess;
The children beat a fish-hook out of wire;
My ailments call for physic more or less,
What else should this poor frame of mine require?_”
(4.) “_Alone I wandered o’er the hills to seek the hermit’s den,
While sounds of chopping rang around the forest’s leafy glen.
I passed on ice across the brook, which had not ceased to freeze,
As the slanting rays of afternoon shot sparkling through the trees._
“_I found he did not joy to gloat o’er fetid wealth by night,
But, far from taint, to watch the deer in the golden morning light....
My mind was clear at coming; but now I’ve lost my guide,
And rudderless my little bark is drifting with the tide!_”
(5.) “_From the Court every eve to the pawnshop I pass,
To come back from the river the drunkest of men;
As often as not I’m in debt for my glass;--
Well, few of us live to be threescore and ten._
_The butterfly flutters from flower to flower,
The dragon-fly sips and springs lightly away,
Each creature is merry its brief little hour,
So let us enjoy our short life while we may._”
Here is a specimen of his skill with the “stop-short,” based upon a
disease common to all Chinese, poets or otherwise,--nostalgia:--
“_White gleam the gulls across the darkling tide,
On the green hills the red flowers seem to burn;
Alas! I see another spring has died....
When will it come--the day of my return?_”
Of the poet CHANG CH’IEN not much is known. He graduated in 727, and
entered upon an official career, but ultimately betook himself to the
mountains and lived as a hermit. He is said to have been a devotee of
Taoism. The following poem, however, which deals with _dhyâna_, or
the state of mental abstraction in which all desire for existence is
shaken off, would make it seem as if his leanings had been Buddhistic.
It gives a perfect picture, so far as it goes, of the Buddhist retreat
often to be found among mountain peaks all over China, visited by
pilgrims who perform religious exercises or fulfil vows at the feet of
the World-Honoured, and by contemplative students eager to shake off
the “red dust” of mundane affairs:--
“_The clear dawn creeps into the convent old,
The rising sun tips its tall trees with gold,
As, darkly, by a winding path I reach
Dhyâna’s hall, hidden midst fir and beech.
Around these hills sweet birds their pleasure take,
Man’s heart as free from shadows as this lake;
Here worldly sounds are hushed, as by a spell,
Save for the booming of the altar bell._”
There can be little doubt of the influence of Buddhism upon the poet
TS’ÊN TS’AN, who graduated about 750, as witness his lines on
that faith:--
“_A shrine whose eaves in far-off cloudland hide:
I mount, and with the sun stand side by side.
The air is clear; I see wide forests spread
And mist-crowned heights where kings of old lie dead.
Scarce o’er my threshold peeps the Southern Hill;
The Wei shrinks through my window to a rill....
O thou Pure Faith, had I but known thy scope,
The Golden God[12] had long since been my hope!_”
[Sidenote: WANG CHIEN]
WANG CHIEN took the highest degree in 775, and rose to be Governor of a
District. He managed, however, to offend one of the Imperial clansmen,
in consequence of which his official career was abruptly cut short. He
wrote a good deal of verse, and was on terms of intimacy with several
of the great contemporary poets. In the following lines, the metre of
which is irregular, he alludes to the extraordinary case of a soldier’s
wife who spent all her time on a hill-top looking down the Yang-tsze,
watching for her husband’s return from the wars. At length--
“_Where her husband she sought,
By the river’s long track,
Into stone she was wrought,
And can never come back;
’Mid the wind and the rain-storm for ever and ay,
She appeals to each home-comer passing that way._”
The last line makes the stone figure, into which the unhappy woman was
changed, appear to be asking of every fresh arrival news of the missing
man. That is the skill of the artist, and is inseparably woven into the
original.
[Sidenote: HAN YÜ]
Passing over many poets equally well known with some of those already
cited, we reach a name undoubtedly the most venerated of all those ever
associated in any way with the great mass of Chinese literature. HAN YÜ
(A.D. 768-824), canonised and usually spoken of as Han Wên-kung, was
not merely a poet, but a statesman of the first rank, and philosopher
to boot. He rose from among the humblest of the people to the highest
offices of State. In 803 he presented a memorial protesting against
certain extravagant honours with which the Emperor Hsien Tsung proposed
to receive a bone of Buddha. The monarch was furious, and but for the
intercession of friends it would have fared badly with the bold writer.
As it was, he was banished to Ch‘ao-chou Fu in Kuangtung, where he
set himself to civilise the rude inhabitants of those wild parts. In
a temple at the summit of the neighbouring range there is to be seen
at this day a huge picture of the Prince of Literature, as he has been
called by foreigners from his canonisation, with the following legend
attached:--“Wherever he passed, he purified.” He is even said to have
driven away a huge crocodile which was devastating the watercourses in
the neighbourhood; and the denunciatory ultimatum which he addressed
to the monster and threw into the river, together with a pig and a
goat, is still regarded as a model of Chinese composition. It was
not very long ere he was recalled to the capital and reinstated in
office; but he had been delicate all his life and had grown prematurely
old, and was thus unable to resist a severe illness which came upon
him. His friend and contemporary, Liu Tsung-yüan, said that he never
ventured to open the works of Han Yü without first washing his hands
in rose-water. His writings, especially his essays, are often of the
very highest order, leaving nothing to be desired either in originality
or in style. But it is more than all for his pure and noble character,
his calm and dignified patriotism, that the Chinese still keep his
memory green. The following lines were written by Su Tung-p‘o, nearly
300 years after his death, for a shrine which had just been put up in
honour of the dead teacher by the people of Ch‘ao-chou Fu:--
“_He rode on the dragon to the white cloud domain;
He grasped with his hand the glory of the sky;
Robed with the effulgence of the stars,
The wind bore him delicately to the throne of God.
He swept away the chaff and husks of his generation.
He roamed over the limits of the earth.
He clothed all nature with his bright rays,
The third in the triumvirate of genius.[13]
His rivals panted after him in vain,
Dazed by the brilliancy of the light.
He cursed Buddha; he offended his prince;
He journeyed far away to the distant south;
He passed the grave of Shun, and wept over the daughters of Yao.
The water-god went before him and stilled the waves.
He drove out the fierce monster as it were a lamb.
But above, in heaven, there was no music, and God was sad,
And summoned him to his place beside the Throne.
And now, with these poor offerings, I salute him;
With red lichees and yellow plantain fruit.
Alas! that he did not linger awhile on earth,
But passed so soon, with streaming hair, into the great unknown._”
Han Yü wrote a large quantity of verse, frequently playful, on an
immense variety of subjects, and under his touch the commonplace was
often transmuted into wit. Among other pieces there is one on his
teeth, which seemed to drop out at regular intervals, so that he could
calculate roughly what span of life remained to him. Altogether, his
poetry cannot be classed with that of the highest order, unlike his
prose writings, extracts from which will be given in the next chapter.
The following poem is a specimen of his lighter vein:--
“_To stand upon the river-bank
and snare the purple fish,
My net well cast across the stream,
was all that I could wish.
Or lie concealed and shoot the geese
that scream and pass apace,
And pay my rent and taxes with
the profits of the chase.
Then home to peace and happiness,
with wife and children gay,
Though clothes be coarse and fare be hard,
and earned from day to day.
But now I read and read, scarce knowing
what ’tis all about,
And, eager to improve my mind,
I wear my body out.
I draw a snake and give it legs,
to find I’ve wasted skill,
And my hair grows daily whiter
as I hurry towards the hill.[14]
I sit amid the sorrows
I have brought on my own head,
And find myself estranged from all,
among the living dead.
I seek to drown my consciousness
in wine, alas! in vain:
Oblivion passes quickly
and my griefs begin again.
Old age comes on, and yet withholds
the summons to depart....
So I’ll take another bumper
just to ease my aching heart._”
Humane treatment of the lower animals is not generally supposed to be a
characteristic of the Chinese. They have no Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, which may perhaps account for some of their
shortcomings in this direction. Han Yü was above all things of a
kindly, humane nature, and although the following piece cannot be taken
seriously, it affords a useful index to his general feelings:--
“_Oh, spare the busy morning fly,
Spare the mosquitos of the night!
And if their wicked trade they ply,
Let a partition stop their flight._
“_Their span is brief from birth to death;
Like you, they bite their little day;
And then, with autumn’s earliest breath,
Like you, too, they are swept away._”
The following lines were written on the way to his place of exile in
Kuangtung:--
“_Alas! the early season flies,
Behold the remnants of the spring!
My boat in landlocked water lies,
At dawn I hear the wild birds sing._
“_Then, through clouds lingering on the slope,
The rising sun breaks on to me,
And thrills me with a fleeting hope,--
A prisoner longing to be free._
“_My flowing tears are long since dried,
Though care clings closer than it did.
But stop! All care we lay aside
When once they close the coffin lid._”
[Sidenote: PO CHÜ-I]
Another famous poet, worthy to be mentioned even after Han Yü,
was PO CHÜ-I (A.D. 772-846). As a child he was most precocious,
knowing a considerable number of the written characters at the
early age of seven months, after having had each one pointed
out only once by his nurse. He graduated at the age of seventeen, and
rose to high office in the State, though at one period of his life
he was banished to a petty post, which somewhat disgusted him with
officialdom. To console himself, he built a retreat at Hsiang-shan,
by which name he is sometimes called; and there, together with eight
congenial companions, he gave himself up to poetry and speculations
upon a future life. To escape recognition and annoyance, all names were
dropped, and the party was generally known as the Nine Old Gentlemen of
Hsiang-shan. This reaching the ears of the Emperor, he was transferred
to be Governor of Chung-chou; and on the accession of Mu Tsung in
821 he was sent as Governor to Hangchow. There he built one of the
great embankments of the beautiful Western Lake, still known as Po’s
Embankment. He was subsequently Governor of Soochow, and finally rose
in 841 to be President of the Board of War. His poems were collected
by Imperial command and engraved upon tablets of stone, which were
set up in a garden he had made for himself in imitation of his former
beloved retreat at Hsiang-shan. He disbelieved in the genuineness of
the _Tao-Tê-Ching_, and ridiculed its preposterous claims as follows:--
“_‘Who know, speak not; who speak, know naught,’
Are words from Lao Tzŭ’s lore.
What then becomes of Lao Tzŭ’s own
‘Five thousand words and more’?_”
Here is a charming poem from his pen, which tells the story of a poor
lute-girl’s sorrows. This piece is ranked very high by the commentator
Lin Hsi-chung, who points out how admirably the wording is adapted to
echo the sense, and declares that such workmanship raises the reader
to that state of mental ecstasy known to the Buddhists as _samâdhi_,
and can only be produced once in a thousand autumns. The “guest” is the
poet himself, setting out a second time for his place of banishment, as
mentioned above, from a point about half-way thither, where he had been
struck down by illness:--
“By night, at the riverside, adieus were spoken: beneath the maple’s
flower-like leaves, blooming amid autumnal decay. Host had dismounted
to speed the parting guest, already on board his boat. Then a
stirrup-cup went round, but no flute, no guitar, was heard. And so, ere
the heart was warmed with wine, came words of cold farewell beneath the
bright moon, glittering over the bosom of the broad stream ... when
suddenly across the water a lute broke forth into sound. Host forgot
to go, guest lingered on, wondering whence the music, and asking who
the performer might be. At this, all was hushed, but no answer given. A
boat approached, and the musician was invited to join the party. Cups
were refilled, lamps trimmed again, and preparations for festivity
renewed. At length, after much pressing, she came forth, hiding her
face behind her lute; and twice or thrice sweeping the strings,
betrayed emotion ere her song was sung. Then every note she struck
swelled with pathos deep and strong, as though telling the tale of a
wrecked and hopeless life, while with bent head and rapid finger she
poured forth her soul in melody. Now softly, now slowly, her plectrum
sped to and fro; now this air, now that; loudly, with the crash of
falling rain; softly, as the murmur of whispered words; now loud and
soft together, like the patter of pearls and pearlets dropping upon
a marble dish. Or liquid, like the warbling of the mango-bird in the
bush; trickling, like the streamlet on its downward course. And then,
like the torrent, stilled by the grip of frost, so for a moment was
the music lulled, in a passion too deep for sound. Then, as bursts the
water from the broken vase, as clash the arms upon the mailed horseman,
so fell the plectrum once more upon the strings with a slash like the
rent of silk.
“Silence on all sides: not a sound stirred the air. The autumn moon
shone silver athwart the tide, as with a sigh the musician thrust her
plectrum beneath the strings and quietly prepared to take leave. ‘My
childhood,’ said she, ‘was spent at the capital, in my home near the
hills. At thirteen, I learnt the guitar, and my name was enrolled
among the _primas_ of the day. The _maëstro_ himself acknowledged my
skill: the most beauteous of women envied my lovely face. The youths
of the neighbourhood vied with each other to do me honour: a single
song brought me I know not how many costly bales. Golden ornaments and
silver pins were smashed, blood-red skirts of silk were stained with
wine, in oft-times echoing applause. And so I laughed on from year to
year, while the spring breeze and autumn moon swept over my careless
head.
“‘Then my brother went away to the wars: my mother died. Nights passed
and mornings came; and with them my beauty began to fade. My doors were
no longer thronged; but few cavaliers remained. So I took a husband
and became a trader’s wife. He was all for gain, and little recked of
separation from me. Last month he went off to buy tea, and I remained
behind, to wander in my lonely boat on moon-lit nights over the cold
wave, thinking of the happy days gone by, my reddened eyes telling of
tearful dreams.’
“The sweet melody of the lute had already moved my soul to pity, and
now these words pierced me to the heart again. ‘O lady,’ I cried, ‘we
are companions in misfortune, and need no ceremony to be friends. Last
year I quitted the Imperial city, and fever-stricken reached this spot,
where in its desolation, from year’s end to year’s end, no flute or
guitar is heard. I live by the marshy river-bank, surrounded by yellow
reeds and stunted bamboos. Day and night no sounds reach my ears save
the blood-stained note of the nightjar, the gibbon’s mournful wail.
Hill songs I have, and village pipes with their harsh discordant twang.
But now that I listen to thy lute’s discourse, methinks ’tis the music
of the gods. Prithee sit down awhile and sing to us yet again, while I
commit thy story to writing.’
“Grateful to me (for she had been standing long), the lute-girl
sat down and quickly broke forth into another song, sad and soft,
unlike the song of just now. Then all her hearers melted into tears
unrestrained; and none flowed more freely than mine, until my bosom was
wet with weeping.”
Perhaps the best known of all the works of Po Chü-i is a narrative
poem of some length entitled “The Everlasting Wrong.” It refers to the
ignominious downfall of the Emperor known as Ming Huang (A.D.
685-762), who himself deserves a passing notice. At his accession
to the throne in 712, he was called upon to face an attempt on the
part of his aunt, the T‘ai-p‘ing Princess, to displace him; but this
he succeeded in crushing, and entered upon what promised to be a
glorious reign. He began with economy, closing the silk factories
and forbidding the palace ladies to wear jewels or embroideries,
considerable quantities of which were actually burnt. Until 740 the
country was fairly prosperous. The administration was improved, the
empire was divided into fifteen provinces, and schools were established
in every village. The Emperor was a patron of literature, and himself
a poet of no mean capacity. He published an edition of the Classic of
Filial Piety, and caused the text to be engraved on four tablets of
stone, A.D. 745. His love of war, however, and his growing
extravagance, led to increased taxation. Fond of music, he founded a
college for training youth of both sexes in this art. He surrounded
himself by a brilliant Court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Po,
at first for their talents alone, but afterwards for their readiness
to participate in scenes of revelry and dissipation provided for the
amusement of the Imperial concubine, the ever-famous Yang Kuei-fei.
Eunuchs were appointed to official posts, and the grossest forms of
religious superstition were encouraged. Women ceased to veil themselves
as of old. Gradually the Emperor left off concerning himself with
affairs of State; a serious rebellion broke out, and his Majesty sought
safety in flight to Ssŭch‘uan, returning only after having abdicated
in favour of his son. The accompanying poem describes the rise of
Yang Kuei-fei, her tragic fate at the hands of the soldiery, and her
subsequent communication with her heart-broken lover from the world of
shadows beyond the grave:--
ENNUI.--_His Imperial Majesty, a slave to beauty,
longed for a “subverter of empires;”[15]
For years he had sought in vain
to secure such a treasure for his palace...._
BEAUTY.--_From the Yang family came a maiden,
just grown up to womanhood,
Reared in the inner apartments,
altogether unknown to fame.
But nature had amply endowed her
with a beauty hard to conceal,
And one day she was summoned
to a place at the monarch’s side.
Her sparkling eye and merry laughter
fascinated every beholder,
And among the powder and paint of the harem
her loveliness reigned supreme.
In the chills of spring, by Imperial mandate,
she bathed in the Hua-ch‘ing Pool,
Laving her body in the glassy wavelets
of the fountain perennially warm.
Then, when she came forth, helped by attendants,
her delicate and graceful movements
Finally gained for her gracious favour,
captivating his Majesty’s heart._
REVELRY.--_Hair like a cloud, face like a flower,
headdress which quivered as she walked,
Amid the delights of the Hibiscus Pavilion
she passed the soft spring nights.
Spring nights, too short alas! for them,
albeit prolonged till dawn,--
From this time forth no more audiences
in the hours of early morn.
Revels and feasts in quick succession,
ever without a break,
She chosen always for the spring excursion,
chosen for the nightly carouse.
Three thousand peerless beauties adorned
the apartments of the monarch’s harem,
Yet always his Majesty reserved
his attentions for her alone.
Passing her life in a “golden house,”[16]
with fair girls to wait on her,
She was daily wafted to ecstasy
on the wine fumes of the banquet-hall.
Her sisters and her brothers, one and all,
were raised to the rank of nobles.
Alas! for the ill-omened glories
which she conferred on her family.
For thus it came about that fathers and mothers
through the length and breadth of the empire
Rejoiced no longer over the birth of sons,
but over the birth of daughters.
In the gorgeous palace
piercing the grey clouds above,
Divine music, borne on the breeze,
is spread around on all sides;
Of song and the dance
to the guitar and flute,
All through the live long day,
his Majesty never tires.
But suddenly comes the roll
of the fish-skin war-drums,
Breaking rudely upon the air
of the “Rainbow Skirt and Feather Jacket.”_
FLIGHT.--_Clouds of dust envelop
the lofty gates of the capital.
A thousand war-chariots and ten thousand horses
move towards the south-west.
Feathers and jewels among the throng,
onwards and then a halt.
A hundred ~li~ beyond the western gate,
leaving behind them the city walls,
The soldiers refuse to advance;
nothing remains to be done
Until she of the moth-eyebrows
perishes in sight of all.
On the ground lie gold ornaments
with no one to pick them up,
Kingfisher wings, golden birds,
and hairpins of costly jade.
The monarch covers his face,
powerless to save;
And as he turns to look back,
tears and blood flow mingled together._
EXILE.--_Across vast stretches of yellow sand
with whistling winds,
Across cloud-capped mountain-tops
they make their way.
Few indeed are the travellers
who reach the heights of Mount Omi;
The bright gleam of the standards
grows fainter day by day.
Dark the Ssŭch‘uan waters,
dark the Ssŭch‘uan hills;
Daily and nightly his Majesty
is consumed by bitter grief.
Travelling along, the very brightness
of the moon saddens his heart,
And the sound of a bell through the evening rain
severs his viscera in twain._
RETURN.--_Time passes, days go by, and once again
he is there at the well-known spot,
And there he lingers on, unable
to tear himself wholly away.
But from the clods of earth
at the foot of the Ma-wei hill,
No sign of her lovely face appears,
only the place of death.
The eyes of sovereign and minister meet,
and robes are wet with tears,
Eastward they depart and hurry on
to the capital at full speed._
HOME.--_There is the pool and there are the flowers,
as of old.
There is the hibiscus of the pavilion,
there are the willows of the palace.
In the hibiscus he sees her face,
in the willow he sees her eyebrows:
How in the presence of these
should tears not flow,--
In spring amid the flowers
of the peach and plum,
In autumn rains when the leaves
of the ~wu t‘ung~ fall?
To the south of the western palace
are many trees,
And when their leaves cover the steps,
no one now sweeps them away.
The hair of the Pear-Garden musicians
is white as though with age;
The guardians of the Pepper Chamber[17]
seem to him no longer young.
Where fireflies flit through the hall,
he sits in silent grief;
Alone, the lamp-wick burnt out,
he is still unable to sleep.
Slowly pass the watches,
for the nights are now too long,
And brightly shine the constellations,
as though dawn would never come.
Cold settles upon the duck-and-drake tiles,[18]
and thick hoar-frost,
The kingfisher coverlet is chill,
with none to share its warmth.
Parted by life and death,
time still goes on,
But never once does her spirit come back
to visit him in dreams._
SPIRIT-LAND.--_A Taoist priest of Lin-ch‘ung,
of the Hung-tu school,
Was able, by his perfect art, to summon
the spirits of the dead.
Anxious to relieve the fretting mind
of his sovereign,
This magician receives orders
to urge a diligent quest.
Borne on the clouds, charioted upon ether,
he rushes with the speed of lightning
High up to heaven, low down to earth,
seeking everywhere.
Above, he searches the empyrean;
below, the Yellow Springs,
But nowhere in these vast areas
can her place be found.
At length he hears of an Isle of the Blest
away in mid-ocean,
Lying in realms of vacuity,
dimly to be descried.
There gaily decorated buildings
rise up like rainbow clouds,
And there many gentle and beautiful Immortals
pass their days in peace.
Among them is one whose name
sounds upon lips as Eternal,
And by her snow-white skin and flower-like face
he knows that this is she.
Knocking at the jade door
at the western gate of the golden palace,
He bids a fair waiting-maid announce him
to her mistress, fairer still.
She, hearing of this embassy
sent by the Son of Heaven,
Starts up from her dreams
among the tapestry curtains.
Grasping her clothes and pushing away the pillow,
she arises in haste,
And begins to adorn herself
with pearls and jewels.
Her cloud-like coiffure, dishevelled,
shows that she has just risen from sleep,
And with her flowery head-dress awry,
she passes into the hall.
The sleeves of her immortal robes
are filled out by the breeze,
As once more she seems to dance
to the “Rainbow Skirt and Feather Jacket.”
Her features are fixed and calm,
though myriad tears fall,
Wetting a spray of pear-bloom,
as it were with the raindrops of spring.
Subduing her emotions, restraining her grief,
she tenders thanks to his Majesty,
Saying how since they parted
she has missed his form and voice;
And how, although their love on earth
has so soon come to an end,
The days and months among the Blest
are still of long duration.
And now she turns and gazes
towards the abode of mortals,
But cannot discern the Imperial city
lost in the dust and haze.
Then she takes out the old keepsakes,
tokens of undying love,
A gold hairpin, an enamel brooch,
and bids the magician carry these back.
One half of the hairpin she keeps,
and one half of the enamel brooch,
Breaking with her hands the yellow gold,
and dividing the enamel in two.
“Tell him,” she said, “to be firm of heart,
as this gold and enamel,
And then in heaven or on earth below
we two may meet once more.”
At parting, she confided to the magician
many earnest messages of love,
Among the rest recalling a pledge
mutually understood;
How on the seventh day of the seventh moon,
in the Hall of Immortality,
At midnight, when none were near,
he had whispered in her ear,
“I swear that we will ever fly
like the one-winged birds,[19]
Or grow united like the tree
with branches which twine together.”[20]
Heaven and Earth, long-lasting as they are,
will some day pass away;
But this great wrong shall stretch out for ever,
endless, for ever and ay._
[Sidenote: LI HO]
A precocious and short-lived poet was LI HO, of the ninth
century. He began to write verses at the age of seven. Twenty years
later he met a strange man riding on a hornless dragon, who said to
him, “God Almighty has finished his Jade Pavilion, and has sent for you
to be his secretary.” Shortly after this he died. The following is a
specimen of his poetry:--
“_With flowers on the ground like embroidery spread,
At twenty, the soft glow of wine in my head,
My white courser’s bit-tassels motionless gleam
While the gold-threaded willow scent sweeps o’er the stream.
Yet until ~she~ has smiled, all these flowers yield no ray;
When her tresses fall down the whole landscape is gay;
My hand on her sleeve as I gaze in her eyes,
A kingfisher hairpin will soon be my prize._”
CHANG CHI, who also flourished in the ninth century, was
eighty years old when he died. He was on terms of close friendship with
Han Yü, and like him, too, a vigorous opponent of both Buddhism and
Taoism. The following is his most famous poem, the beauty of which,
says a commentator, lies beyond the words:--
“_Knowing, fair sir, my matrimonial thrall,
Two pearls thou sentest me, costly withal.
And I, seeing that Love thy heart possessed,
I wrapped them coldly in my silken vest._
“_For mine is a household of high degree,
My husband captain in the King’s army;
And one with wit like thine should say,
‘The troth of wives is for ever and ay.’_
“_With thy two pearls I send thee back two tears:
Tears--that we did not meet in earlier years._”
Many more poets of varying shades of excellence must here be set aside,
their efforts often brightened by those quaint conceits which are so
dear to the Chinese reader, but which approach so perilously near to
bathos when they appear in foreign garb. A few specimens, torn from
their setting, may perhaps have an interest of their own. Here is a
lady complaining of the leaden-footed flight of time as marked by the
water-clock:--
“_It seems that the clepsydra
has been filled up with the sea,
To make the long, long night appear
an endless night to me!_”
The second line in the next example is peculiarly characteristic:--
“_Dusk comes, the east wind blows, and birds
pipe forth a mournful sound;
Petals, like nymphs from balconies,
come tumbling to the ground._”
The next refers to candles burning in a room where two friends are
having a last talk on the night before parting for a long period:--
“_The very wax sheds sympathetic tears,
And gutters sadly down till dawn appears._”
This last is from a friend to a friend at a distance:--
“_Ah, when shall we ever snuff candles again,
And recall the glad hours of that evening of rain?_”
[Sidenote: LI SHÊ]
A popular poet of the ninth century was LI SHÊ, especially
well known for the story of his capture by highwaymen. The chief knew
him by name and called for a sample of his art, eliciting the following
lines, which immediately secured his release:--
“_The rainy mist sweeps gently o’er the village by the stream,
When from the leafy forest glades the brigand daggers gleam....
And yet there is no need to fear, nor step from out their way,
For more than half the world consists of bigger rogues than they!_”
A popular physician in great request, as well as a poet, was MA TZŬ-JAN
(_d._ A.D. 880). He studied Taoism in a hostile sense, as would appear
from the following poem by him; nevertheless, according to tradition,
he was ultimately taken up to heaven alive:--
“_In youth I went to study ~TAO~ at its living fountain-head,
And then lay tipsy half the day upon a gilded bed.
‘What oaf is this,’ the Master cried, ‘content with human lot?’
And bade me to the world get back and call myself a sot.
But wherefore seek immortal life by means of wondrous pills?
Noise is not in the market-place, nor quiet on the hills.
The secret of perpetual youth is already known to me:
Accept with philosophic calm whatever fate may be._”
HSÜ AN-CHÊN, of the ninth century, is entitled to a place among the
T‘ang poets, if only for the following piece:--
“_When the Bear athwart was lying,
And the night was just on dying,
And the moon was all but gone,
How my thoughts did ramble on!_
“_Then a sound of music breaks
From a lute that some one wakes,
And I know that it is she,
The sweet maid next door to me._
“_And as the strains steal o’er me
Her moth-eyebrows rise before me,
And I feel a gentle thrill
That her fingers must be chill._
“_But doors and locks between us
So effectually screen us
That I hasten from the street
And in dreamland pray to meet._”
The following lines by TU CH’IN-NIANG, a poetess of the ninth century,
are included in a collection of 300 gems of the T‘ang dynasty:--
“_I would not have thee grudge those robes
which gleam in rich array,
But I would have thee grudge the hours
of youth which glide away.
Go, pluck the blooming flower betimes,
lest when thou com’st again
Alas! upon the withered stem
no blooming flowers remain!_”
[Sidenote: SSŬ-K‘UNG T‘U]
It is time perhaps to bring to a close the long list, which might be
almost indefinitely lengthened. SSŬ-K‘UNG T‘U (A.D. 834-908) was a
secretary in the Board of Rites, but he threw up his post and became
a hermit. Returning to Court in 905, he accidentally dropped part
of his official insignia at an audience,--an unpardonable breach of
Court etiquette,--and was allowed to retire once more to the hills,
where he ultimately starved himself to death through grief at the
murder of the youthful Emperor. He is commonly known as the Last of
the T‘angs; his poetry, which is excessively difficult to understand,
ranking correspondingly high in the estimation of Chinese critics. The
following philosophical poem, consisting of twenty-four apparently
unconnected stanzas, is admirably adapted to exhibit the form under
which pure Taoism commends itself to the mind of a cultivated scholar:--
i.--ENERGY--ABSOLUTE.
“_Expenditure of force leads to outward decay,
Spiritual existence means inward fulness.
Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute,
Hoarding up strength for Energy.
Freighted with eternal principles,
Athwart the mighty void,
Where cloud-masses darken,
And the wind blows ceaseless around,
Beyond the range of conceptions,
Let us gain the Centre,
And there hold fast without violence,
Fed from an inexhaustible supply._”
ii.--TRANQUIL REPOSE.
“_It dwells in quietude, speechless,
Imperceptible in the cosmos,
Watered by the eternal harmonies,
Soaring with the lonely crane.
It is like a gentle breeze in spring,
Softly bellying the flowing robe;
It is like the note of the bamboo flute,
Whose sweetness we would fain make our own.
Meeting by chance, it seems easy of access,
Seeking, we find it hard to secure.
Ever shifting in semblance,
It shifts from the grasp and is gone._”
iii.--SLIM--STOUT.
“_Gathering the water-plants
From the wild luxuriance of spring,
Away in the depth of a wild valley
Anon I see a lovely girl.
With green leaves the peach-trees are loaded,
The breeze blows gently along the stream,
Willows shade the winding path,
Darting orioles collect in groups.
Eagerly I press forward
As the reality grows upon me....
’Tis the eternal theme
Which, though old, is ever new._”
iv.--CONCENTRATION.
“_Green pines and a rustic hut,
The sun sinking through pure air,
I take off my cap and stroll alone,
Listening to the song of birds.
No wild geese fly hither,
And she is far away;
But my thoughts make her present
As in the days gone by.
Across the water dark clouds are whirled,
Beneath the moonbeams the eyots stand revealed,
And sweet words are exchanged
Though the great River rolls between._”
v.--HEIGHT--ANTIQUITY.
“_Lo the Immortal, borne by spirituality,
His hand grasping a lotus flower,
Away to Time everlasting,
Trackless through the regions of Space!
With the moon he issues from the Ladle,[21]
Speeding upon a favourable gale;
Below, Mount Hua looms dark,
And from it sounds a clear-toned bell.
Vacantly I gaze after his vanished image,
Now passed beyond the bounds of mortality....
Ah, the Yellow Emperor and Yao,
They, peerless, are his models._”
vi.--REFINEMENT.
“_A jade kettle with a purchase of spring,[22]
A shower on the thatched hut
Wherein sits a gentle scholar,
With tall bamboos growing right and left,
And white clouds in the newly-clear sky,
And birds flitting in the depths of trees.
Then pillowed on his lute in the green shade,
A waterfall tumbling overhead,
Leaves dropping, not a word spoken,
The man placid, like a chrysanthemum,
Noting down the flower-glory of the season,--
A book well worthy to be read._”
vii.--WASH--SMELT.
“_As iron from the mines,
As silver from lead,
So purify thy heart,
Loving the limpid and clean.
Like a clear pool in spring,
With its wondrous mirrored shapes,
So make for the spotless and true,
And, riding the moonbeam, revert to the Spiritual.
Let your gaze be upon the stars of heaven,[23]
Let your song be of the hiding hermit;[23]
Like flowing water is our to-day,
Our yesterday, the bright moon._”[24]
viii.--STRENGTH.
“_The mind as though in the void,
The vitality as though of the rainbow,
Among the thousand-ell peaks of Wu,
Flying with the clouds, racing with the wind;
Drink of the spiritual, feed on force,
Store them for daily use, guard them in your heart,
Be like Him in His might,[25]
For this is to preserve your energy;
Be a peer of Heaven and Earth,
A co-worker in Divine transformation....
Seek to be full of these,
And hold fast to them alway._”
ix.--EMBROIDERIES.
“_If the mind has wealth and rank,
One may make light of yellow gold.
Rich pleasures pall ere long,
Simple joys deepen ever.
A mist-cloud hanging on the river bank,
Pink almond-flowers along the bough,
A flower-girt cottage beneath the moon,
A painted bridge half seen in shadow,
A golden goblet brimming with wine,
A friend with his hand on the lute....
Take these and be content;
They will swell thy heart beneath thy robe._”
x.--THE NATURAL.
“_Stoop, and there it is;
Seek it not right and left.
All roads lead thither,--
One touch and you have spring![26]
As though coming upon opening flowers,
As though gazing upon the new year,
Verily I will not snatch it,
Forced, it will dwindle away.
I will be like the hermit on the hill,
Like duckweed gathered on the stream,[27]
And when emotions crowd upon me,
I will leave them to the harmonies of heaven._”
xi.--SET FREE.
“_Joying in flowers without let,
Breathing the empyrean,
Through ~TAO~ reverting to ether,
And there to be wildly free,
Wide-spreading as the wind of heaven,
Lofty as the peaks of ocean,
Filled with a spiritual strength,
All creation by my side,
Before me the sun, moon, and stars,
The phœnix following behind.
In the morning I whip up my leviathans
And wash my feet in Fusang._”[28]
xii.--CONSERVATION.
“_Without a word writ down,
All wit may be attained.
If words do not affect the speaker,
They seem inadequate to sorrow.[29]
Herein is the First Cause,
With which we sink or rise,
As wine in the strainer mounts high,
As cold turns back the season of flowers.
The wide-spreading dust-motes in the air,
The sudden spray-bubbles of ocean,
Shallow, deep, collected, scattered,--
You grasp ten thousand, and secure one._”
xiii.--ANIMAL SPIRITS.
“_That they might come back unceasingly,
That they might be ever with us!--
The bright river, unfathomable,
The rare flower just opening,
The parrot of the verdant spring,
The willow-trees, the terrace,
The stranger from the dark hills,
The cup overflowing with clear wine....
Oh, for life to be extended,
With no dead ashes of writing,
Amid the charms of the Natural,--
Ah, who can compass it?_”
xiv.--CLOSE WOVEN.
“_In all things there are veritable atoms,
Though the senses cannot perceive them,
Struggling to emerge into shape
From the wondrous workmanship of God.
Water flowing, flowers budding,
The limpid dew evaporating,
An important road, stretching far,
A dark path where progress is slow....
So words should not shock,
Nor thought be inept.
But be like the green of spring,
Like snow beneath the moon._”[30]
xv.--SECLUSION.
“_Following our own bent,
Enjoying the Natural, free from curb,
Rich with what comes to hand,
Hoping some day to be with God.
To build a hut beneath the pines,
With uncovered head to pore over poetry,
Knowing only morning and eve,
But not what season it may be....
Then, if happiness is ours,
Why must there be action?
If of our own selves we can reach this point,
Can we not be said to have attained?_”
xvi.--FASCINATION.
“_Lovely is the pine-grove,
With the stream eddying below,
A clear sky and a snow-clad bank,
Fishing-boats in the reach beyond.
And she, like unto jade,
Slowly sauntering, as I follow through the dark wood,
Now moving on, now stopping short,
Far away to the deep valley....
My mind quits its tenement, and is in the past,
Vague, and not to be recalled,
As though before the glow of the rising moon,
As though before the glory of autumn._”
xvii.--IN TORTUOUS WAYS.
“_I climbed the Tai-hsing mountain
By the green winding path,
Vegetation like a sea of jade,
Flower-scent borne far and wide.
Struggling with effort to advance,
A sound escaped my lips,
Which seemed to be back ere ’twas gone,
As though hidden but not concealed.[31]
The eddying waters rush to and fro,
Overhead the great rukh soars and sails;
~TAO~ does not limit itself to a shape,
But is round and square by turns._”
xviii.--ACTUALITIES.
“_Choosing plain words
To express simple thoughts,
Suddenly I happened upon a recluse,
And seemed to see the heart of TAO.
Beside the winding brook,
Beneath dark pine-trees’ shade,
There was one stranger bearing a faggot,
Another listening to the lute.
And so, where my fancy led me,
Better than if I had sought it,
I heard the music of heaven,
Astounded by its rare strains._”
xix.--DESPONDENT
“_A gale ruffles the stream
And trees in the forest crack;
My thoughts are bitter as death,
For she whom I asked will not come.
A hundred years slip by like water,
Riches and rank are but cold ashes,
~TAO~ is daily passing away,
To whom shall we turn for salvation?
The brave soldier draws his sword,
And tears flow with endless lamentation;
The wind whistles, leaves fall,
And rain trickles through the old thatch._”
xx.--FORM AND FEATURE.
“_After gazing fixedly upon expression and substance
The mind returns with a spiritual image,
As when seeking the outlines of waves,
As when painting the glory of spring.
The changing shapes of wind-swept clouds,
The energies of flowers and plants,
The rolling breakers of ocean,
The crags and cliffs of mountains,
All these are like mighty ~TAO~,
Skilfully woven into earthly surroundings....
To obtain likeness without form,
Is not that to possess the man?_”
xxi.--THE TRANSCENDENTAL.
“_Not of the spirituality of the mind,
Nor yet of the atoms of the cosmos,
But as though reached upon white clouds,
Borne thither by pellucid breezes.
Afar, it seems at hand,
Approach, ’tis no longer there;
Sharing the nature of ~TAO~,
It shuns the limits of mortality.
It is in the piled-up hills, in tall trees,
In dark mosses, in sunlight rays....
Croon over it, think upon it;
Its faint sound eludes the ear._”
xxii.--ABSTRACTION.
“_Without friends, longing to be there,
Alone, away from the common herd,
Like the crane on Mount Hou,
Like the cloud at the peak of Mount Hua.
In the portrait of the hero
The old fire still lingers;
The leaf carried by the wind
Floats on the boundless sea.
It would seem as though not to be grasped,
But always on the point of being disclosed.
Those who recognise this have already attained;
Those who hope, drift daily farther away._”
xxiii.--ILLUMINED.
“_Life stretches to one hundred years,
And yet how brief a span;
Its joys so fleeting,
Its griefs so many!
What has it like a goblet of wine,
And daily visits to the wistaria arbour,
Where flowers cluster around the eaves,
And light showers pass overhead?
Then when the wine-cup is drained,
To stroll about with staff of thorn;
For who of us but will some day be an ancient?...
Ah, there is the South Mountain in its grandeur!_”[32]
xxiv.--MOTION.
“_Like a whirling water-wheel,
Like rolling pearls,--
Yet how are these worthy to be named?
They are but illustrations for fools.
There is the mighty axis of Earth,
The never-resting pole of Heaven;
Let us grasp their clue,
And with them be blended in One,
Beyond the bounds of thought,
Circling for ever in the great Void,
An orbit of a thousand years,--
Yes, this is the key to my theme._”
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Alluding to the huge gilt images of Buddha to be seen in all
temples.
[13] The other two were Li Po and Tu Fu.
[14] Graves are placed by preference on some hillside.
[15] Referring to a famous beauty of the Han dynasty, one glance from
whom would overthrow a city, two glances an empire.
[16] Referring to A-chiao, one of the consorts of an Emperor of the
Han dynasty. “Ah,” said the latter when a boy, “if I could only get
A-chiao, I would have a golden house to keep her in.”
[17] A fancy name for the women’s apartments in the palace.
[18] The mandarin duck and drake are emblems of conjugal fidelity. The
allusion is to ornaments on the roof.
[19] Each bird having only one wing, must always fly with a mate.
[20] Such a tree was believed to exist, and has often been figured by
the Chinese.
[21] The Great Bear.
[22] Wine which makes man see spring at all seasons.
[23] Emblems of purity.
[24] Our previous state of existence at the eternal Centre to which the
moon belongs.
[25] The Power who, without loss of force, causes things to be what
they are--God.
[26] Alluding to the art of the painter.
[27] A creature of chance, following the doctrine of Inaction.
[28] Variously identified with Saghalien, Mexico, and Japan.
[29]
...Si vis me flere dolendum est
Primum ipsi tibi....
[30] Each invisible atom of which combines to produce a perfect whole.
[31] Referring to an echo.
[32] This remains, while all other things pass away.
CHAPTER II
_CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE_
The classical scholarship of the Tang dynasty was neither very original
nor very profound. It is true that the second Emperor founded a College
of Learning, but its members were content to continue the traditions
of the Hans, and comparatively little was achieved in the line of
independent research. Foremost among the names in the above College
stands that of LU YÜAN-LANG (550-625). He had been Imperial
Librarian under the preceding dynasty, and later on distinguished
himself by his defence of Confucianism against both Buddhist and Taoist
attacks. He published a valuable work on the explanations of terms and
phrases in the Classics and in Taoist writers.
Scarcely less eminent as a scholar was WEI CHÊNG (581-643),
who also gained great reputation as a military commander. He was
appointed President of the Commission for drawing up the history of the
previous dynasty, and he was, in addition, a poet of no mean order. At
his death the Emperor said, “You may use copper as a mirror for the
person; you may use the past as a mirror for politics; and you may use
man as a mirror to guide one’s judgment in ordinary affairs. These
three mirrors I have always carefully cherished; but now that Wei Chêng
is gone, I have lost one of them.”
Another well-known scholar is YEN SHIH-KU (579-645). He was
employed upon a recension of the Classics, and also upon a new and
annotated edition of the history of the Han dynasty; but his exegesis
in the former case caused dissatisfaction, and he was ordered to a
provincial post. Although nominally reinstated before this degradation
took effect, his ambition was so far wounded that he ceased to be the
same man. He lived henceforth a retired and simple life.
LI PO-YAO (565-648) was so sickly a child, and swallowed so
much medicine, that his grandmother insisted on naming him Po-yao
= Pharmacopœia, while his precocious cleverness earned for him the
sobriquet of the Prodigy. Entering upon a public career, he neglected
his work for gaming and drink, and after a short spell of office he
retired. Later on he rose once more, and completed the History of the
Northern Ch‘i Dynasty.
A descendant of Confucius in the thirty-second degree, and a
distinguished scholar and public functionary, was K‘UNG YING-TA
(574-648). He wrote a commentary on the Book of Odes, and is credited
with certain portions of the History of the Sui Dynasty. Besides this,
he is responsible for comments and glosses on the Great Learning and on
the Doctrine of the Mean.
Lexicography was perhaps the department of pure scholarship in which
the greatest advances were made. Dictionaries on the phonetic system,
based upon the work of Lu Fa-yen of the sixth century, came very much
into vogue, as opposed to those on the radical system initiated by Hsü
Shên. Not that the splendid work of the latter was allowed to suffer
from neglect. LI YANG-PING, of the eighth century, devoted
much time and labour to improving and adding to its pages. The latter
was a Government official, and when filling a post as magistrate in
763, he is said to have obtained rain during a drought by threatening
the City God with the destruction of his temple unless his prayers were
answered within three days.
[Sidenote: CHANG CHIH-HO]
CHANG CHIH-HO (eighth century), author of a work on the conservation
of vitality, was of a romantic turn of mind and especially fond of
Taoist speculations. He took office under the Emperor Su Tsung of the
T‘ang dynasty, but got into some trouble and was banished. Soon after
this he shared in a general pardon; whereupon he fled to the woods
and mountains and became a wandering recluse, calling himself the Old
Fisherman of the Mists and Waters. He spent his time in angling, but
used no bait, his object not being to catch fish. When asked why he
roamed about, Chang answered and said, “With the empyrean as my home,
the bright moon my constant companion, and the four seas my inseparable
friends,--what mean you by _roaming_?” And when a friend offered him
a comfortable home instead of his poor boat, he replied, “I prefer to
follow the gulls into cloudland, rather than to bury my eternal self
beneath the dust of the world.”
The author of the _T‘ung Tien_, an elaborate treatise on the
constitution, still extant, was TU YU (_d._ 812). It is
divided into eight sections under Political Economy, Examinations
and Degrees, Government Offices, Rites, Music, Military Discipline,
Geography, and National Defences.
[Sidenote: LIU TSUNG-YÜAN]
Among writers of general prose literature, LIU TSUNG-YÜAN
(773-819) has left behind him much that for purity of style and
felicity of expression has rarely been surpassed. Besides being
poet, essayist, and calligraphist, he was a Secretary in the Board of
Rites. There he became involved in a conspiracy, and was banished to a
distant spot, where he died. His views were deeply tinged with Buddhist
thought, for which he was often severely censured, once in a letter by
his friend and master, Han Yü. These few lines are part of his reply on
the latter occasion:--
“The features I admire in Buddhism are those which are coincident with
the principles enunciated in our own sacred books. And I do not think
that, even were the holy sages of old to revisit the earth, they would
fairly be able to denounce these. Now, Han Yü objects to the Buddhist
commandments. He objects to the bald pates of the priests, their dark
robes, their renunciation of domestic ties, their idleness, and life
generally at the expense of others. So do I. But Han Yü misses the
kernel while railing at the husk. He sees the lode, but not the ore. I
see both; hence my partiality for this faith.
“Again, intercourse with men of this religion does not necessarily
imply conversion. Even if it did, Buddhism admits no envious rivalry
for place or power. The majority of its adherents love only to lead a
simple life of contemplation amid the charms of hill and stream. And
when I turn my gaze towards the hurry-scurry of the age, in its daily
race for the seals and tassels of office, I ask myself if I am to
reject those in order to take my place among the ranks of these.
“The Buddhist priest, Hao-ch‘u, is a man of placid temperament and
of passions subdued. He is a fine scholar. His only joy is to muse
o’er flood and fell, with occasional indulgence in the delights of
composition. His family follow in the same path. He is independent of
all men, and no more to be compared with those heterodox sages of whom
we make so much than with the vulgar herd of the greedy, grasping world
around us.”
On this the commentator remarks, that one must have the genius of Han
Yü to condemn Buddhism, the genius of Liu Tsung-yüan to indulge in it.
Here is a short study on a great question:--
“Over the western hills the road trends away towards the north, and on
the farther side of the pass separates into two. The westerly branch
leads to nowhere in particular; but if you follow the other, which
takes a north-easterly turn, for about a quarter of a mile, you will
find that the path ends abruptly, while the stream forks to enclose
a steep pile of boulders. On the summit of this pile there is what
appears to be an elegantly built look-out tower; below, as it were a
battlemented wall, pierced by a city gate, through which one gazes into
darkness. A stone thrown in here falls with a splash suggestive of
water, and the reverberations of this sound are audible for some time.
There is a way round from behind up to the top, whence nothing is seen
far and wide except groves of fine straight trees, which, strange to
say, are grouped symmetrically, as if by an artist’s hand.
“Now, I have always had my doubts about the existence of a God, but
this scene made me think He really must exist. At the same time,
however, I began to wonder why He did not place it in some worthy
centre of civilisation, rather than in this out-of-the-way barbarous
region, where for centuries there has been no one to enjoy its beauty.
And so, on the other hand, such waste of labour and incongruity of
position disposed me to think that there cannot be a God after all.”
One favourite piece is a letter which Liu Tsung-yüan writes in a
bantering style to congratulate a well-to-do literary man on having
lost everything in a fire, especially, as he explains, if the victim
has been “utterly and irretrievably beggared.” It will give such a
rare opportunity, he points out, to show the world that there was no
connection whatever between worldly means and literary reputation.
A well-known satirical piece by Liu Tsung-yüan is entitled “Catching
Snakes,” and is directed against the hardships of over-taxation:--
“In the wilds of Hu-kuang there is an extraordinary kind of snake,
having a black body with white rings. Deadly fatal, even to the grass
and trees it may chance to touch; in man, its bite is absolutely
incurable. Yet, if caught and prepared, when dry, in the form of cakes,
the flesh of this snake will soothe excitement, heal leprous sores,
remove sloughing flesh, and expel evil spirits. And so it came about
that the Court physician, acting under Imperial orders, exacted from
each family a return of two of these snakes every year; but as few
persons were able to comply with the demand, it was subsequently made
known that the return of snakes was to be considered in lieu of the
usual taxes. Thereupon there ensued a general stampede among the people
of those parts.”
It turned out, however, that snake-catching was actually less deadly
than paying such taxes as were exacted from those who dared not face
its risks and elected to contribute in the ordinary way. One man,
whose father and grandfather had both perished from snake-bites,
declared that after all he was better off than his neighbours, who were
ground down and beggared by the iniquities of the tax-gatherer. “Harsh
tyrants,” he explained, “sweep down upon us, and throw everybody and
everything, even to the brute beasts, into paroxysms of terror and
disorder. But I,--I get up in the morning and look into the jar where
my snakes are kept; and if they are still there, I lie down at night
in peace. At the appointed time, I take care that they are fit to be
handed in; and when that is done, I retire to enjoy the produce of
my farm and complete the allotted span of my existence. Only twice a
year have I to risk my life: the rest is peaceful enough and not to be
compared with the daily round of annoyance which falls to the share of
my fellow-villagers.”
A similar satire on over-government introduces a deformed gardener
called Camel-back. This man was extraordinarily successful as a
nurseryman:--
“One day a customer asked him how this was so; to which he replied,
‘Old Camel-back cannot make trees live or thrive. He can only let them
follow their natural tendencies. Now in planting trees, be careful to
set the root straight, to smooth the earth around them, to use good
mould, and to ram it down well. Then, don’t touch them; don’t think
about them; don’t go and look at them; but leave them alone to take
care of themselves, and nature will do the rest. I only avoid trying
to make my trees grow. I have no special method of cultivation, no
special means for securing luxuriance of growth. I only don’t spoil
the fruit. I have no way of getting it either early or in abundance.
Other gardeners set with bent root and neglect the mould. They heap
up either too much earth or too little. Or if not this, then they
become too fond of and too anxious about their trees, and are for
ever running backwards and forwards to see how they are growing;
sometimes scratching them to make sure they are still alive, or shaking
them about to see if they are sufficiently firm in the ground; thus
constantly interfering with the natural bias of the tree, and turning
their affection and care into an absolute bane and a curse. I only
don’t do these things. That’s all.’
“‘Can these principles you have just now set forth be applied to
government?’ asked his listener. ‘Ah!’ replied Camel-back, ‘I only
understand nursery-gardening: government is not my trade. Still, in
the village where I live, the officials are for ever issuing all kinds
of orders, as if greatly compassionating the people, though really to
their utter injury. Morning and night the underlings come round and
say, ‘His Honour bids us urge on your ploughing, hasten your planting,
and superintend your harvest. Do not delay with your spinning and
weaving. Take care of your children. Rear poultry and pigs. Come
together when the drum beats. Be ready at the sound of the rattle.’
Thus are we poor people badgered from morn till eve. We have not a
moment to ourselves. How could any one flourish and develop naturally
under such conditions?’”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: HAN YÜ]
In his prose writings Han Yü showed even more variety of subject than
in his verse. His farewell words to his dead friend Liu Tsung-yüan,
read, according to Chinese custom, by the side of the bier or at the
grave, and then burnt as a means of communicating them to the deceased,
are widely known to his countrymen:--
“Alas! Tzŭ-hou, and hast thou come to this pass?--Fool that I am! is
it not the pass to which mortals have ever come? Man is born into the
world like a dream: what need has he to take note of gain or loss?
While the dream lasts, he may sorrow or may joy; but when the awakening
is at hand, why cling regretfully to the past?
“’Twere well for all things an they had no worth. The excellence of
its wood is the bane of the tree. And thou, whose early genius knew no
curb, weaver of the jewelled words, thou wilt be remembered when the
imbeciles of fortune and place are forgot.
“The unskilful bungler hacks his hands and streams with sweat, while
the expert craftsman looks on with folded arms. O my friend, thy work
was not for this age; though I, a bungler, have found employment in the
service of the State. Thou didst know thyself above the common herd;
but when in shame thou didst depart never to return, the Philistines
usurped thy place.
“Alas! Tzŭ-hou, now thou art no more. But thy last wish, that I should
care for thy little son, is still ringing sadly in my ears. The
friendships of the day are those of self-interest alone. How can I feel
sure that I shall live to carry out thy behest? I did not arrogate to
myself this duty. Thou thyself hast bidden me to the task; and, by the
Gods above, I will not betray thy trust.
“Thou hast gone to thy eternal home, and wilt not return. With these
sacrifices by thy coffin’s side, I utter an affectionate farewell.”
The following passages are taken from his essay on the Way or Method of
Confucianism:--
“Had there been no sages of old, the race of man would have long since
become extinct. Men have not fur and feathers and scales to adjust
the temperature of their bodies; neither have they claws and fangs
to aid them in the struggle for food. Hence their organisation, as
follows:--The sovereign issues commands. The minister carries out these
commands, and makes them known to the people. The people produce grain
and flax and silk, fashion articles of everyday use, and interchange
commodities, in order to fulfil their obligations to their rulers. The
sovereign who fails to issue his commands loses his _raison d’être_;
the minister who fails to carry out his sovereign’s commands, and to
make them known to the people, loses his _raison d’être_; the people
who fail to produce grain and flax and silk, fashion articles of
everyday use, and interchange commodities, in order to fulfil their
obligations to their rulers, should lose their heads.”
* * * * *
“And if I am asked what Method is this, I reply that it is what I call
_the_ Method, and not merely a method like those of Lao Tzŭ and Buddha.
The Emperor Yao handed it down to the Emperor Shun; the Emperor Shun
handed it down to the Great Yü; and so on until it reached Confucius,
and lastly Mencius, who died without transmitting it to any one else.
Then followed the heterodox schools of Hsün and Yang, wherein much
that was essential was passed over, while the criterion was vaguely
formulated. In the days before Chou Kung, the Sages were themselves
rulers; hence they were able to secure the reception of their Method.
In the days after Chou Kung, the Sages were all high officers of State;
hence its duration through a long period of time.
“And now, it will be asked, what is the remedy? I answer that unless
these false doctrines are rooted out, the true faith will not prevail.
Let us insist that the followers of Lao Tzŭ and Buddha behave
themselves like ordinary mortals. Let us burn their books. Let us turn
their temples into dwelling-houses. Let us make manifest the Method
of our ancient kings, in order that men may be led to embrace its
teachings.”
Of the character of Han Yü’s famous ultimatum to the crocodile, which
all Chinese writers have regarded as a real creature, though probably
the name is but an allegorical veil, the following extract may
suffice:--
“O Crocodile! thou and I cannot rest together here. The Son of Heaven
has confided this district and this people to my charge; and thou, O
goggle-eyed, by disturbing the peace of this river and devouring the
people and their domestic animals, the bears, the boars, and deer
of the neighbourhood, in order to batten thyself and reproduce thy
kind,--thou art challenging me to a struggle of life and death. And
I, though of weakly frame, am I to bow the knee and yield before a
crocodile? No! I am the lawful guardian of this place, and I would
scorn to decline thy challenge, even were it to cost me my life.
“Still, in virtue of my commission from the Son of Heaven, I am bound
to give fair warning; and thou, O crocodile, if thou art wise, will
pay due heed to my words. There before thee lies the broad ocean, the
domain alike of the whale and the shrimp. Go thither and live in peace.
It is but the journey of a day.”
The death of a dearly loved nephew, comparatively near to him in age,
drew from Han Yü a long and pathetic “In Memoriam,” conveyed, as
mentioned above, to the ears of the departed through the medium of fire
and smoke. These are two short extracts:--
“The line of my noble-hearted brother has indeed been prematurely
cut off. Thy pure intelligence, hope of the family, survives not to
continue the traditions of his house. Unfathomable are the appointments
of what men call Heaven: inscrutable are the workings of the unseen:
unknowable are the mysteries of eternal truth: unrecognisable those who
are destined to attain to old age!
“Henceforth my grey hairs will grow white, my strength fail. Physically
and mentally hurrying on to decay, how long before I shall follow thee?
If there is knowledge after death, this separation will be but for
a little while. If there is not knowledge after death, so will this
sorrow be but for a little while, and then no more sorrow for ever.”
* * * * *
“O ye blue heavens, when shall my sorrow have end? Henceforth the world
has no charms. I will get me a few acres on the banks of the Ying, and
there await the end, teaching my son and thy son, if haply they may
grow up,--my daughter and thy daughter, until their day of marriage
comes. Alas! though words fail, love endureth. Dost thou hear, or dost
thou not hear? Woe is me: Heaven bless thee!”
Of all Han Yü’s writings in prose or in verse, there was not one which
caused anything like the sensation produced by his memorial to the
Emperor on the subject of Buddha’s bone. The fact was, Buddhism was
making vast strides in popular esteem, and but for some such bold
stand as was made on this occasion by a leading man, the prestige of
Confucianism would have received a staggering blow. Here is an extract
from this fiery document, which sent its author into exile and nearly
cost him his life:--
“Your servant has now heard that instructions have been issued to
the priestly community to proceed to Fêng-hsiang and receive a bone
of Buddha, and that from a high tower your Majesty will view its
introduction into the Imperial Palace; also that orders have been sent
to the various temples, commanding that the relic be received with the
proper ceremonies. Now, foolish though your servant may be, he is well
aware that your Majesty does not do this in the vain hope of deriving
advantages therefrom; but that in the fulness of our present plenty,
and in the joy which reigns in the heart of all, there is a desire to
fall in with the wishes of the people in the celebration at the capital
of this delusive mummery. For how could the wisdom of your Majesty
stoop to participate in such ridiculous beliefs? Still the people are
slow of perception and easily beguiled; and should they behold your
Majesty thus earnestly worshipping at the feet of Buddha, they would
cry out, ‘See! the Son of Heaven, the All-Wise, is a fervent believer;
who are we, his people, that we should spare our bodies?’ Then would
ensue a scorching of heads and burning of fingers; crowds would collect
together, and, tearing off their clothes and scattering their money,
would spend their time from morn to eve in imitation of your Majesty’s
example. The result would be that by and by young and old, seized with
the same enthusiasm, would totally neglect the business of their lives;
and should your Majesty not prohibit it, they would be found flocking
to the temples, ready to cut off an arm or slice their bodies as an
offering to the god. Thus would our traditions and customs be seriously
injured, and ourselves become a laughing-stock on the face of the
earth;--truly, no small matter!
“For Buddha was a barbarian. His language was not the language of
China. His clothes were of an alien cut. He did not utter the
maxims of our ancient rulers, nor conform to the customs which they
have handed down. He did not appreciate the bond between prince and
minister, the tie between father and son. Supposing, indeed, this
Buddha had come to our capital in the flesh, under an appointment from
his own State, then your Majesty might have received him with a few
words of admonition, bestowing on him a banquet and a suit of clothes,
previous to sending him out of the country with an escort of soldiers,
and thereby have avoided any dangerous influence on the minds of the
people. But what are the facts? The bone of a man long since dead and
decomposed is to be admitted, forsooth, within the precincts of the
Imperial Palace! Confucius said, ‘Pay all respect to spiritual beings,
but keep them at a distance.’ And so, when the princes of old paid
visits of condolence to one another, it was customary for them to send
on a magician in advance, with a peach-wand in his hand, whereby to
expel all noxious influences previous to the arrival of his master. Yet
now your Majesty is about to causelessly introduce a disgusting object,
personally taking part in the proceedings, without the intervention
either of the magician or of his peach-wand. Of the officials, not one
has raised his voice against it; of the censors, not one has pointed
out the enormity of such an act. Therefore your servant, overwhelmed
with shame for the censors, implores your Majesty that these bones
be handed over for destruction by fire or water, whereby the root of
this great evil may be exterminated for all time, and the people know
how much the wisdom of your Majesty surpasses that of ordinary men.
The glory of such a deed will be beyond all praise. And should the
Lord Buddha have power to avenge this insult by the infliction of some
misfortune, then let the vials of his wrath be poured out upon the
person of your servant, who now calls Heaven to witness that he will
not repent him of his oath.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: LI HUA]
A writer named LI HUA, of whom little is known except that
he flourished in the ninth century, has left behind him one very much
admired piece entitled “On an Old Battlefield”:--
“Vast, vast,--a limitless extent of flat sand, without a human being
in sight, girdled by a stream and dotted with hills, where in the
dismal twilight the wind moans at the setting sun. Shrubs gone: grass
withered: all chill as the hoar-frost of early morn. The birds of the
air fly past: the beasts of the field shun the spot; for it is, as I
was informed by the keeper, the site of an old battlefield. ‘Many a
time and oft,’ said he, ‘has an army been overthrown on this spot; and
the voices of the dead may frequently be heard weeping and wailing in
the darkness of the night.’”
This is how the writer calls up in imagination the ghastly scene of
long ago:--
“And now the cruel spear does its work, the startled sand blinds the
combatants locked fast in the death-struggle; while hill and vale
and stream groan beneath the flash and crash of arms. By and by, the
chill cold shades of night fall upon them, knee-deep in snow, beards
stiff with ice. The hardy vulture seeks its nest: the strength of the
war-horse is broken. Clothes are of no avail; hands frost-bitten,
flesh cracked. Even nature lends her aid to the Tartars, contributing
a deadly blast, the better to complete the work of slaughter begun.
Ambulance waggons block the way: our men succumb to flank attacks.
Their officers have surrendered: their general is dead. The river is
choked with corpses to its topmost banks: the fosses of the Great Wall
are swimming over with blood. All distinctions are obliterated in that
heap of rotting bones....
“Faintly and more faintly beats the drum. Strength exhausted, arrows
spent, bow-strings snapped, swords shattered, the two armies fall upon
one another in the supreme struggle for life or death. To yield is to
become the barbarian’s slave: to fight is to mingle our bones with the
desert sand....
“No sound of bird now breaks from the hushed hillside. All is still
save the wind whistling through the long night. Ghosts of the dead
wander hither and thither in the gloom: spirits from the nether world
collect under the dark clouds. The sun rises and shines coldly over the
trampled grass, while the fading moon still twinkles upon the frost
flakes scattered around. What sight more horrible than this!”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MEN OF T‘ANG]
The havoc wrought by the dreaded Tartars is indeed the theme of many
a poem in prose as well as in verse. The following lines by CH’ÊN
T‘AO, of about this date, record a patriotic oath of indignant
volunteers and the mournful issue of fruitless valour:--
“_They swore the Huns should perish: they would die if needs they
must....
And now five thousand, sable-clad, have bit the Tartar dust.
Along the river-bank their bones lie scattered where they may,
But still their forms in dreams arise to fair ones far away._”
Among their other glories, the T‘angs may be said to have witnessed the
birth of popular literature, soon to receive, in common with classical
scholarship, an impetus the like of which had never yet been felt.
But we must now take leave of this dynasty, the name of which has
survived in common parlance to this day. For just as the northerners
are proud to call themselves “sons of Han,” so do the Chinese of the
more southern provinces still delight to be known as the “men of
T‘ang.”
BOOK THE FIFTH
_THE SUNG DYNASTY_ (A.D. 900-1200)
CHAPTER I
THE INVENTION OF BLOCK-PRINTING
The T‘ang dynasty was brought to an end in 907, and during the
succeeding fifty years the empire experienced no fewer than five
separate dynastic changes. It was not a time favourable to literary
effort; still production was not absolutely at a standstill, and some
minor names have come down to us.
Of CHANG PI, for instance, of the later Chou dynasty, little
is known, except that he once presented a voluminous memorial to his
sovereign in the hope of staving off political collapse. The memorial,
we are told, was much admired, but the advice contained in it was not
acted upon. These few lines of his occur in many a poetical garland:--
“_After parting, dreams possessed me, and I wandered you know where,
And we sat in the verandah, and you sang the sweet old air.
Then I woke, with no one near me save the moon, still shining on,
And lighting up dead petals which like you have passed and gone._”
There is, however, at least one name of absorbing interest to the
foreign student. FÊNG TAO (881-954) is best known to the
Chinese as a versatile politician who served first and last under no
less than ten Emperors of four different Houses, and gave himself a
sobriquet which finds its best English equivalent in “The Vicar of
Bray.” He presented himself at the Court of the second Emperor of
the Liao dynasty and positively asked for a post. He said he had no
home, no money, and very little brains; a statement which appears to
have appealed forcibly to the Tartar monarch, who at once appointed
him grand tutor to the heir-apparent. By foreigners, on the other
hand, he will be chiefly remembered as the inventor of the art of
block-printing. It seems probable, indeed, that some crude form of this
invention had been already known early in the T‘ang dynasty, but until
the date of Fêng Tao it was certainly not applied to the production
of books. Six years after his death the “fire-led” House of Sung was
finally established upon the throne, and thenceforward the printing of
books from blocks became a familiar handicraft with the Chinese people.
[Sidenote: GOLDEN TARTARS]
With the advent of this new line, we pass, as the Chinese fairy-stories
say, to “another heaven and earth.” The various departments of history,
classical scholarship, general literature, lexicography, and poetry
were again filled with enthusiastic workers, eagerly encouraged by a
succession of enlightened rulers. And although there was a falling-off
consequent upon the irruption of the Golden Tartars in 1125-1127, when
the ex-Emperor and his newly appointed successor were carried captive
to the north, nevertheless the Sungs managed to create a great epoch,
and are justly placed in the very first rank among the builders of
Chinese literature.
CHAPTER II
HISTORY--CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE
[Sidenote: OU-YANG HSIU]
The first move made in the department of history was nothing less than
to re-write the whole of the chronicles of the T‘ang dynasty. The usual
scheme had already been carried out by Liu Hsü (897-946), a learned
scholar of the later Chin dynasty, but on many grounds the result was
pronounced unsatisfactory, and steps were taken to supersede it. The
execution of this project was entrusted to Ou-yang Hsiu and Sung Ch‘i,
both of whom were leading men in the world of letters. OU-YANG
HSIU (1007-1072) had been brought up in poverty, his mother
teaching him to write with a reed. By the time he was fifteen his great
abilities began to attract attention, and later on he came out first on
the list of candidates for the third or highest degree. His public life
was a chequered one, owing to the bold positions he took up in defence
of what he believed to be right, regardless of personal interest.
Besides the dynastic history, he wrote on all kinds of subjects, grave
and gay, including an exposition of the Book of Poetry, a work on
ancient inscriptions, anecdotes of the men of his day, an elaborate
treatise on the peony, poetry and essays without end. The following is
a specimen of his lighter work, greatly admired for the beauty of its
style, and diligently read by all students of composition. The theme,
as the reader will perceive, is the historian himself:--
“The district of Ch‘u is entirely surrounded by hills, and the peaks to
the south-west are clothed with a dense and beautiful growth of trees,
over which the eye wanders in rapture away to the confines of Shantung.
A walk of two or three miles on those hills brings one within earshot
of the sound of falling water, which gushes forth from a ravine known
as the Wine-Fountain; while hard by in a nook at a bend of the road
stands a kiosque, commonly spoken of as the Old Drunkard’s Arbour. It
was built by a Buddhist priest, called Deathless Wisdom, who lived
among these hills, and who received the above name from the Governor.
The latter used to bring his friends hither to take wine; and as he
personally was incapacitated by a very few cups, and was, moreover,
well stricken in years, he gave himself the sobriquet of the Old
Drunkard. But it was not wine that attracted him to this spot. It was
the charming scenery, which wine enabled him to enjoy.
“The sun’s rays peeping at dawn through the trees, by and by to be
obscured behind gathering clouds, leaving naught but gloom around, give
to this spot the alternations of morning and night. The wild-flowers
exhaling their perfume from the darkness of some shady dell, the
luxuriant foliage of the dense forest of beautiful trees, the clear
frosty wind, and the naked boulders of the lessening torrent,--these
are the indications of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Morning
is the time to go thither, returning with the shades of night, and
although the place presents a different aspect with the changes of
the seasons, its charms are subject to no interruption, but continue
alway. Burden-carriers sing their way along the road, travellers rest
awhile under the trees, shouts from one, responses from another, old
people hobbling along, children in arms, children dragged along by
hand, backwards and forwards all day long without a break,--these are
the people of Ch‘u. A cast in the stream and a fine fish taken from
some spot where the eddying pools begin to deepen; a draught of cool
wine from the fountain, and a few such dishes of meats and fruits as
the hills are able to provide,--these, nicely spread out beforehand,
constitute the Governor’s feast. And in the revelry of the banquet-hour
there is no thought of toil or trouble. Every archer hits his mark, and
every player wins his _partie_; goblets flash from hand to hand, and a
buzz of conversation is heard as the guests move unconstrainedly about.
Among them is an old man with white hair, bald at the top of his head.
This is the drunken Governor, who, when the evening sun kisses the
tips of the hills and the falling shadows are drawn out and blurred,
bends his steps homewards in company with his friends. Then in the
growing darkness are heard sounds above and sounds below; the beasts
of the field and the birds of the air are rejoicing at the departure
of man. They, too, can rejoice in hills and in trees, but they cannot
rejoice as man rejoices. So also the Governor’s friends. They rejoice
with him, though they know not at what it is that he rejoices. Drunk,
he can rejoice with them, sober, he can discourse with them,--such is
the Governor. And should you ask who is the Governor, I reply, ‘Ou-yang
Hsiu of Lu-ling.’”
Besides dwelling upon the beauty of this piece as vividly portraying
the spirit of the age in which it was written, the commentator proudly
points out that in it the particle _yeh_, with influences as subtle as
those of the Greek γε, occurs no fewer than twenty times.
The next piece is entitled “An Autumn Dirge,” and refers to the sudden
collapse of summer, so common a phenomenon in the East:--
“One night I had just sat down to my books, when suddenly I heard a
sound far away towards the south-west. Listening intently, I wondered
what it could be. On it came, at first like the sighing of a gentle
zephyr ... gradually deepening into the plash of waves upon a surf-beat
shore ... the roaring of huge breakers in the startled night, amid
howling storm-gusts of wind and rain. It burst upon the hanging bell,
and set every one of its pendants tinkling into tune. It seemed like
the muffled march of soldiers, hurriedly advancing, bit in mouth, to
the attack, when no shouted orders rend the air, but only the tramp of
men and horses meet the ear.
“‘Boy,’ said I, ‘what noise is that? Go forth and see.’ ‘Sir,’ replied
the boy on his return, ‘the moon and stars are brightly shining: the
Silver River spans the sky. No sound of man is heard without: ’tis but
the whispering of the trees.’
“‘Alas!’ I cried, ‘autumn is upon us. And is it thus, O boy, that
autumn comes?--autumn, the cruel and the cold; autumn, the season of
rack and mist; autumn, the season of cloudless skies; autumn, the
season of piercing blasts; autumn, the season of desolation and blight!
Chill is the sound that heralds its approach, and then it leaps upon
us with a shout. All the rich luxuriance of green is changed, all the
proud foliage of the forest swept down to earth, withered beneath the
icy breath of the destroyer. For autumn is nature’s chief executioner,
and its symbol is darkness. It has the temper of steel, and its symbol
is a sharp sword. It is the avenging angel, riding upon an atmosphere
of death. As spring is the epoch of growth, so autumn is the epoch of
maturity. And sad is the hour when maturity is passed, for that which
passes its prime must die.
“‘Still, what is this to plants and trees, which fade away in their due
season?... But stay; there is man, man the divinest of all things. A
hundred cares wreck his heart, countless anxieties trace their wrinkles
on his brow, until his inmost self is bowed beneath the burden of life.
And swifter still he hurries to decay when vainly striving to attain
the unattainable, or grieving over his ignorance of that which can
never be known. Then comes the whitening hair--and why not? Has man an
adamantine frame, that he should outlast the trees of the field? Yet,
after all, who is it, save himself, that steals his strength away? Tell
me, O boy, what right has man to accuse his autumn blast?’
“My boy made no answer. He was fast asleep. No sound reached me save
that of the cricket chirping its response to my dirge.”
* * * * *
The other leading historian of this period was SUNG CH’I
(998-1061), who began his career by beating his elder brother at the
graduates’ examination. He was, however, placed tenth, instead of
first, by Imperial command, and in accordance with the precedence of
brothers. He rose to high office, and was also a voluminous writer.
A great favourite at Court, it is related that he was once at some
Imperial festivity when he began to feel cold. The Emperor bade one of
the ladies of the seraglio lend him a tippet, whereupon about a dozen
of the girls each offered hers. But Sung Ch‘i did not like to seem
to favour any one, and rather than offend the rest, continued to sit
and shiver. The so-called New History of the T‘ang Dynasty, which he
produced in co-operation with Ou-yang Hsiu, is generally regarded as
a distinct improvement upon the work of Liu Hsü. It has not, however,
actually superseded the latter work, which is still included among the
recognised dynastic histories, and stands side by side with its rival.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SSŬ-MA KUANG]
Meanwhile another star had risen, in magnitude to be compared only
with the effulgent genius of Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien. SSŬ-MA KUANG (1019-1086)
entered upon an official career and rose to be Minister of State. But
he opposed the great reformer, Wang An-shih, and in 1070 was compelled
to resign. He devoted the rest of his life to the completion of his
famous work known as the _T‘ung Chien_ or Mirror of History, a title
bestowed upon it in 1084 by the Emperor, because “to view antiquity as
it were in a mirror is an aid in the administration of government.” The
Mirror of History covers a period from the fifth century B.C. down to
the beginning of the Sung dynasty, A.D. 960, and was supplemented by
several important works from the author’s own hand, all bearing upon
the subject. In his youth the latter had been a devoted student, and
used to rest his arm upon a kind of round wooden pillow, which roused
him to wakefulness by its movement every time he began to doze over
his work. On one occasion, in childhood, a small companion fell into a
water-kong, and would have been drowned but for the presence of mind of
Ssŭ-ma Kuang. He seized a huge stone, and with it cracked the jar so
that the water poured out. As a scholar he had a large library, and was
so particular in the handling of his books that even after many years’
use they were still as good as new. He would not allow his disciples to
turn over leaves by scratching them up with the nails, but made them
use the forefinger and second finger of the right hand. In 1085 he
determined to return to public life, but he had not been many months
in the capital, labouring as usual for his country’s good, before he
succumbed to an illness and died, universally honoured and regretted
by his countrymen, to whom he was affectionately known as the Living
Buddha.
The following extract from his writings refers to a new and dangerous
development in the Censorate, an institution which still plays a
singular part in the administration of China:--
“Of old there was no such office as that of Censor. From the highest
statesman down to the artisan and trader, every man was free to
admonish the Throne. From the time of the Han dynasty onwards, this
prerogative was vested in an office, with the weighty responsibility
of discussing the government of the empire, the people within the Four
Seas, successes, failures, advantages, and disadvantages, in order of
importance and of urgency. The sole object in this arrangement was
the benefit of the State, not that of the Censor, from whom all ideas
of fame or gain were indeed far removed. In 1017 an edict was issued
appointing six officers to undertake these Censorial duties, and in
1045 their names were for the first time written out on boards; and
then, in 1062, apparently for better preservation, the names were cut
on stone. Thus posterity can point to such an one and say, ‘There was a
loyal man;’ to another, ‘There was a traitor;’ to a third, ‘There was
an upright man;’ to a fourth, ‘There was a scoundrel.’ Does not this
give cause for fear?”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: CHOU TUN-I]
Contemporaneously with Ssŭ-ma Kuang lived CHOU TUN-I (1017-1073), who
combined the duties of a small military command with prolonged and
arduous study. He made himself ill by overwork and strict attention
to the interests of the people at all hazards to himself. His chief
works were written to elucidate the mysteries of the Book of Changes,
and were published after his death by his disciples, with commentaries
by Chu Hsi. The following short satire, veiled under the symbolism of
flowers, being in a style which the educated Chinaman most appreciates,
is very widely known:--
“Lovers of flowering plants and shrubs we have had by scores, but T‘ao
Ch‘ien alone devoted himself to the chrysanthemum. Since the opening
days of the T‘ang dynasty, it has been fashionable to admire the peony;
but my favourite is the water-lily. How stainless it rises from its
slimy bed! How modestly it reposes on the clear pool--an emblem of
purity and truth! Symmetrically perfect, its subtle perfume is wafted
far and wide, while there it rests in spotless state, something to be
regarded reverently from a distance, and not to be profaned by familiar
approach.
“In my opinion the chrysanthemum is the flower of retirement and
culture; the peony the flower of rank and wealth; the water-lily, the
Lady Virtue _sans pareille_.
“Alas! few have loved the chrysanthemum since T‘ao Ch‘ien, and none
now love the water-lily like myself, whereas the peony is a general
favourite with all mankind.”
CH’ÊNG HAO (1032-1085) and CH’ÊNG I (1033-1107) were two brothers famed
for their scholarship, especially the younger of the two, who published
a valuable commentary upon the Book of Changes. The elder attracted
some attention by boldly suppressing a stone image in a Buddhist temple
which was said to emit rays from its head, and had been the cause of
disorderly gatherings of men and women. A specimen of his verse will
be given in the next chapter. Ch‘êng I wrote some interesting chapters
on the art of poetry. In one of these he says, “Asked if a man can
make himself a poet by taking pains, I reply that only by taking pains
can any one hope to be ranked as such, though on the other hand the
very fact of taking pains is likely to be inimical to success. The old
couplet reminds us--
_‘E’er one pentameter be spoken
How many a human heart is broken!’_
There is also another old couplet--
_‘’Twere sad to take this heart of mine
And break it o’er a five-foot line.’_
Both of these are very much to the point. Confucius himself did not
make verses, but he did not advise others to abstain from doing so.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: WANG AN-SHIH]