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More Translations from the Chinese


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[48] GETTING UP EARLY ON A SPRING MORNING

       [49] LOSING A SLAVE-GIRL

       [50] THE GRAND HOUSES AT LO-YANG

       [51] THE CRANES

       [52] ON HIS BALDNESS

       [53] THINKING OF THE PAST

       [54] A MAD POEM ADDRESSED TO MY NEPHEWS AND NIECES

       [55] OLD AGE

       [56] TO A TALKATIVE GUEST

       [57] TO LIU YU-HSI

       [58] MY SERVANT WAKES ME

       [59] SINCE I LAY ILL

       [60] SONG OF PAST FEELINGS [With Preface]

       [61] ILLNESS

       [62] RESIGNATION

       YÜAN CHEN

       [63] THE STORY OF TS‘UI YING-YING

       [64] THE PITCHER

       PO HSING-CHIEN

       [65] THE STORY OF MISS LI

       WANG CHIEN

       [66] HEARING THAT HIS FRIEND WAS COMING BACK FROM THE WAR

       [67] THE SOUTH

       OU-YANG HSIU

       [68] AUTUMN

       APPENDIX

       Table of Contents

      This book is not intended to be representative of Chinese literature as a whole. I have chosen and arranged chronologically various pieces which interested me and which it seemed possible to translate adequately.

       Table of Contents

      [a.d. 835]

      Water’s colour at-dusk still white; Sunsets glow in-the-dark gradually nil. Windy lotus shakes [like] broken fan; Wave-moon stirs [like] string [of] jewels. Crickets chirping answer one another; Mandarin-ducks sleep, not alone. Little servant repeatedly announces night; Returning steps still hesitate.

       Table of Contents

      [a.d. 389]

      T‘ien-kung sun warm, pagoda door open; Alone climbing, greet Spring, drink one cup. Without limit excursion-people afar-off wonder at me; What cause most old most first arrived!

      While many of the pieces in “170 Chinese Poems” aimed at literary form in English, others did no more than give the sense of the Chinese in almost as crude a way as the two examples above. It was probably because of this inconsistency that no reviewer treated the book as an experiment in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer.

      In the present work I have aimed more consistently at poetic form, but have included on account of their biographical interest two or three rather unsuccessful versions of late poems by Po Chü-i.

      For leave to reprint I am indebted to the editors of the English Review, Nation, New Statesman, Bulletin of School of Oriental Studies, and Reconstruction.

       Table of Contents

      [Fourth Century b.c.]

      [1] THE GREAT SUMMONS

       Table of Contents

      When Ch‘ü Yüan had been exiled from the Court for nine years, he became so despondent that he feared his soul would part from his body and he would die. It was then that he made the poem called “The Great Summons,” calling upon his soul not to leave him.

      Green Spring receiveth

       The vacant earth;

       The white sun shineth;

       Spring wind provoketh

       To burst and burgeon

       Each sprout and flower.

       In those dark caves where Winter lurketh

       Hide not, my Soul!

       O Soul come back again! O, do not stray!

      O Soul come back again and go not east or west, or north or south!

       For to the East a mighty water drowneth Earth’s other shore;