The Dai horse neighs against the bleak wind of Etsu,
The birds of Etsu have no love for En, in the north,
Emotion is born out of habit.
Yesterday we went out of the Wild-Goose gate,
To-day from the Dragon-Pen.[1]
Surprised. Desert turmoil. Sea sun.
Flying snow bewilders the barbarian heaven.
Lice swarm like ants over our accoutrements.
Mind and spirit drive on the feathery banners.
Hard fight gets no reward.
Loyalty is hard to explain.
Who will be sorry for General Rishogu,
the swift moving,
Whose white head is lost for this province?
[1] I.e., we have been warring from one end of the empire to
the other, now east, now west, on each border.
* * * * *
I have not come to the end of Ernest Fenollosa's notes by a
long way, nor is it entirely perplexity that causes me to
cease from translation. True, I can find little to add to
one line out of a certain poem :
"You know well where it was that I walked
When you had left me."
In another I find a perfect speech in a literality which
will be to many most unacceptable. The couplet is as follows:
"Drawing sword, cut into water, water again flow:
Raise cup, quench sorrow, sorrow again sorry."
There are also other poems, notably the "Five colour
Screen," in which Professor Fenollosa was, as an art critic,
especially interested, and Rihaku's sort of Ars Poetica,
which might be given with diffidence to an audience of good
will. But if I give them, with the necessary breaks for
explanation, and a tedium of notes, it is quite certain that
the personal hatred in which I am held by many, and the
_invidia_ which is directed against me because I have dared
openly to declare my belief in certain young artists, will
be brought to bear first on the flaws of such translation,
and will then be merged into depreciation of the whole book
of translations. Therefore I give only these unquestionable
poems.