 | The works of Li Po, the Chinese poet |  |
I. PART I
INTRODUCTION
POEMS BY LI PO
INTRODUCTION
I
At the early dawn of medieval Europe China had
reached the noontide of her civilization. Indeed, the
three hundred years of the Tang dynasty beginning with
the seventh century witnessed a most brilliant era of
culture and refinement, unsurpassed in all the annals
of the Middle Kingdom. And the greatest of all the
artistic attainments of this period was in literature, and
particularly in poetry. There were no dramatists; no
romancers; but only poets—and poets there were galore.
"In this age," remarks a native critic, "whoever was
a man, was a poet." And this is not satire. The
"Anthology of the Tang Dynasty" consists of nine hundred
Books and contains more than forty-eight thousand
nine hundred poems by no less than two thousand
three hundred poets. Moreover, since this collection
was compiled as late as the eighteenth century by order
of a Manchu emperor, it represents only a meager crop
from a field that had suffered the ruthless ravages of
time for fully a thousand years. Imagine, then, the
vast efflorescence of what must have been veritably a
tropic jungle of poesy!
Now a person may consider it no distinction to be
counted one among these poets when the list is so large;
but to be picked out as the greatest of them all—as the
leader of this colossal army of immortals, is certainly
a singular distinction and honor. And this honor falls
as the greatest poet under the Tangs, and of
China of all times. "He is the lofty peak of Tai," proclaims
an admirer, "towering above ten thousand mountains
and hills; he is the sun in whose presence a million
stars of heaven lose their scintillating splendor."
Before attempting to follow the poet's career in detail,
let us take a glance at China as it was under the
Tang dynasty, especially under the famous emperor
Hsuan Tsung, who was one time patron to Li Po, and
whose long and illustrious reign, ending with his tragic
fall, marks the golden age of Chinese poetry.
II
The Tangs came to power in the early decades of the
seventh century when Mahomet was just starting out on
his first campaigns. Tai Tsung, the second emperor
of the dynasty, in the twenty-three years of his reign
(627-650) consolidated the hostile sections of the
country and laid a firm foundation for his empire,
which he greatly expanded by conquering Tibet and subduing
the Tartar tribes of the Mongolian desert. Wu
Hu—an empress (684-704)—has been much maligned
for usurping the male prerogative of sovereignty; but
she was undoubtedly one of China's ablest rulers and did
more than uphold the prestige of her land during the
last quarter of the century. Then followed shortly
Hsuan Tsung, who ascended the dragon throne in 713
and ruled for forty-two years.
It was an age of great political power for China.
Her suzeraignty extended from Siberia to the Himalaya
mountain range, and from Korea to the Caspian Sea.
of Medina sent precious stones, horses, and spice. From
the Japanese capital, Nara, came envoys and students
at frequent intervals, while once, in 643, from far
Greece Emperor Theodosius despatched a mission to
the court of Cathay.
It was an age of prosperity. The fertile valleys of
the Yellow River and the Yangtze-kiang were turned
into fields of rice, barley and waving corn, amid gleaming
streams and lakes. Peace reigned in China proper
—the vast domain that had once been torn up and made
desolate by internecine wars during the four centuries
of the Three Kingdoms and the Six Dynasties. Even
in the remotest rural district, the wine-pennant, a tavern
sign, was seen flying on the roadside, denoting the presence
of tranquility and good cheer, while large cities
like Lo-yang (i.e. Honan-fu, Honan) and Chin-ling
(i. e. Nanking, Kiansu) flourished immensely with increasing
trade and travel.
Chang-an, the present city of Hsian-fu in Shensi, was
the capital and the wonder of the age. The city was
never so rich, splendid, and spendthrift. "See ye,"
proudly sings a poet, "the splendor of the imperial
abode, and know the majesty of the Son of Heaven!"
Beside the main castle with its nine-fold gates, there
were thirty-six imperial palaces that reared over the
city their resplendent towers and pillars of gold, while
innumerable mansions and villas of noblemen vied with
one another in magnificence. By day the broad avenues
were thronged with motley crowds of townfolk,
gallants on horseback, and mandarin cars drawn by
yokes of black oxen. And there were countless houses
of pleasure, which opened their doors by night, and
with faces like the moon.
It was also an age of religious proselytism. Buddhism
had been in China for centuries before the Tang
dynasty, and the country was dotted with monasteries
and pagodas. It was in the reign of Tai Tsung that
Yuen Tsang, a Buddhist priest, made his famous pilgrimage
to India and brought back several hundred volumes
of Sanscrit sutras. While Confucianism remained ostensibly
the guiding principle of state and social morality,
Taoism had gathered a rich incrustation of mythology
and superstition and was fast winning a following
of both the court and the common people. Laotzu,
the founder of the religion, was claimed by the reigning
dynasty as its remote progenitor and was honored
with an imperial title. In 636 the Nestorian missionaries
were allowed to settle in Chang-an and erect their
church. They were followed by Zoroastrians, and even
Saracens who entered the Chinese capital with their
sword in sheath.
Thus Chang-an became not only the center of religious
proselytism, but also a great cosmopolitan city where
Syrians, Arabs, Persians, Tartars, Tibetans, Koreans,
Japanese and Tonkinese and other peoples of widely
divergent races and faiths lived side by side, presenting
a remarkable contrast to the ferocious religious and
racial strife then prevailing in Europe. Again, in
Chang-an there were colleges of various grades, beside
special institutes for caligraphy, arithmetic and music.
Astronomy was encouraged by Tai Tsung, who also
filled the imperial library with more than two hundred
thousand books. Hsuan Tsung saw to it that there was
empire.
Hsuan Tsung himself was regarded as a perfect prince,
wise and valiant, a sportsman accomplished in all
knightly exercises and a master of all elegant arts.
Being a musician, he established in his palace an
operatic school, called the "Pear Garden," at which
both male and female actors were trained, and in which
historians find the prototype of the modern Chinese
drama. The emperor surrounded himself with a brilliant
court of poets, artists, and beautiful women. Odes
were offered him by Li Po and Tu Fu; Li Kuei-nien sang
at his bidding, while Yang Kuei-fei, the loveliest of the
three thousand palace ladies, ever accompanied his
palanquin. Although in his latter years he indulged in
all sorts of extravagant revelry, he was never vulgar.
It is fitting that he is still remembered by the name
of Ming Huang—the "Illustrious Sovereign."
But in order to complete the picture of this era there
is a darker side, which really brought into full play
the spiritual energies of the Chinese race. Within, the
court, from the very beginning of the dynasty, was upset
more than once by the bloody intrigues of princes and
princesses who coveted the imperial crown. Without,
China had her Vandals and Goths and Franks, to whom
her wealth and splendor offered irresistible temptation
to pillage. The border warfare never ceased, and not
without many a serious reverse for the imperial forces,
which made forays in retaliation, often far into the
hostile territories, losing their men by thousands. Tai
Tsung's Korean expedition was nothing but a gigantic
fiasco, and the conquest of that peninsula was completed
the Kitans, a redoubtable foe, appeared on the northern
border. In the west the restive and warlike Tibetans
could not be wholly pacified by political marriages,
in which the imperial princesses were bestowed on the
barbarian chieftains from time to time. The armies of
Hsuan Tsung were most unfortunate. In 751 thirty
thousand men perished in the desert of Gobi; while in
the campaigns in Yunnan against the southern barbarians
the Chinese lost, it is said, two hundred thousand
men. Finally came the rebellion of An Lu-shan, which
like a storm swept the mid-imperial plains, drenched
them in blood, and left the empire tottering on the brink
of ruin.
An Lu-shan was a soldier of the Kitan race, who distinguished
himself in fighting against his own tribes,
and who won the favor of Yang Kuei-fei and the confidence
of Hsuan Tsung. His promotion was rapid. He
was ennobled as a duke, and made the governor of the
border provinces of the north, where he held under command
the best armies of the empire and nursed an inordinate
ambition, biding his time. Meanwhile at the
court, the blind love of Hsuan Tsung for Yang Kuei-fei
was corrupting the government. Her brother Yang
Kuo-chung was appointed prime-minister, while eunuchs
held high offices of state. At last in the spring of
755, An Lu-shan, under the pretext of ridding the court
of Yang Kuo-chung, raised the standard of rebellion.
He quickly captured the city of Lo-yang, occupied the
entire territory north of the Yellow River, comprising
the provinces of Shansi and Chili, and was soon marching
eastward on Chang-an. He had proclaimed himself
the Emperor of the Great Yen dynasty.
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Hsuan Tsung, now an
aged monarch, in amazement at the ingratitude of his
vassal and at the impending catastrophe. The defense
at the Pass of Tung Kwan collapsed. The emperor
was forced to flee from the capital one rainy morning,
with his favorite mistress and a handful of his faithful
servants. The soldiers escorting Hsuan Tsung blamed
Yang Kuo-chung for the disaster, and he and all his
kin were massacred. Yang Kuei-fei herself did not escape.
She was ruthlessly snatched from the arms of
her imperial lover, and was strangled and buried on
the roadside without ceremony. The emperor abdicated
in favor of his son, and proceeded mournfully to
Ssuchuan, the land of Shuh.
The new emperor, Su Tsung, mustered a strong army
under General Kuo Tsu-i to oppose the foes. Confusion
was added by the revolt of Prince Ling, the sixteenth
son of Hsuan Tsung, who challenged the authority of
his brother from his stronghold in the southern provinces,
though this uprising was promptly suppressed.
An Lu-shan was driven from Chang-an in 757, and was
shortly murdered by his own son, who was in turn killed
by An Lu-shan's general, Shi Ssu-ming, another Kitan
Tartar, who assumed the imperial title and retained the
northern provinces in his iron grip. But Shi Ssu-ming
himself was soon assassinated by his son, and the rebellion
came finally to an end in 762. We need not
follow the history longer. In that very year the former
emperor, Hsuan Tsung, who had returned from exile
to a lonely palace in Chang-an, died, broken-hearted.
Such was the era. It had, on the one hand, internal
peace, prosperity, cosmopolitan culture, profuse hospitalities
and literary patronage; on the other, distant
with its tragic drama of stupendous magnitude,
that brought forth Li Po and his race of poets, kindled
their imagination, and touched their heart-strings to immortal
song.
III
The ancestry of Li Po is traced back through the
obscurity of many generations to Li Kao of the fifth
century, who ruled the Liang State, or the western portion
of what is now the province of Kansu. The family
dwelt in exile for a period in the Mongolian desert land.
The poet himself writes of his being "Originally a cotten-clothed
of Lunhsi." That is to say, he was a plain
citizen of a district in Kansu. But he was born, according
to best authorities, in the adjoining land of
Shuh, or the present Ssuchuan—that picturesque western
province of mountains and tumbling waters which
flow into the great Yangtze-kiang.
As to the year of his birth, biographers again differ.
Some maintain it to have been as early as 699, while
others would have it as late as 705, with consequent
variation in his age, since he died, as all agree, in the
year 762. A biographical calendar, compiled by Sieh
Chung-yung of the Sung dynasty, places the poet's birth
in the second year of the Shen-lung era; while another
calendar by Wang-chi of the Ming dynasty, who edited
the complete works of Li Po, fixes the year as the first
of the Chang-an era. All evidence seems to favor the
latter date, which falls in the year of 701.
On the night of the poet's birth his mother dreamed
of the planet of Chang-keng, which is Venus, and which
is popularly known in China as the Tai-po Hsing,
that he was named Po (the White One), and surnamed
Tai-po (the Great White One). Later he dubbed himself
the Green Lotus Man, borrowing the name from
a Buddhist saint; and sometimes went by the self-evident
designation of the "Old Wine Genius."
When a boy of six Li Po could read, and by the age
of ten he had mastered the Confucian books of the Odes
and the History and miscellaneous classics by a hundred
writers, and was composing poems of his own. While
he was still in his teens, he retired with a recluse by the
name of Tunyen-tzu to the mountain of Min in northern
Ssuchuan. Here the two men kept strange birds
as pets and succeeded in taming them to feed from their
hands, the report of which brought to their hermitage
the local magistrate, who invited them to enter the
government service. But they declined. Our young
poet sang contentedly:
Loving leisure and enamored of the hills.
In 721 he traveled down the Yangtze to Yun-meng,
the land of seven moors, that lies to the north of the river
and the Tung-ting Lake; here he was married to a granddaughter
of a certain ex-minister Hsu, and stayed there
for three years.
Then he moved up north to Shantung, and made his
home in Jen-cheng and elsewhere. "I am thirty," he
wrote to a friend, "I make verses without tiring, while
in front of my house carts and horses go by." Years
passed without any visible achievement. One cannot
blame too harshly his first wife who, impatient of the
lack of his promotion, left him with the children. It
Idlers of the Bamboo Valley" who gathered in the mountain
of Chu-lai for the jolly fellowship of wine and
song. He traveled extensively, too. Once he was in
the city of Lo-yang, enjoying the lavish hospitality of
Tung Tsas-chiu, who had a special wine house built for
the poet at the Tien-tsin bridge-head, where
Songs were bought with yellow gold, and laughter with
white jewels.[1]
Taiyuan-fu in Shansi, where Tung's father was stationed
as the military commander. Here the two companions
went on happy excursions, taking singing-girls out on
the river by the dynastic shrine of Chin. It was in
Ping-chou that the poet befriended Kuo Tsu-i, who was
still a young soldier in the ranks, but who was later to
become the savior of the empire as well as of the poet's
life. In the year 738 Li Po was back in Shantung when
Tu Fu, his one great and formidable rival in poetic
fame, arrived in the province and met him. At once
a warm friendship and exchange of poems began that
lasted lifelong, and that makes the happiest and most
memorable chapter in China's literary history. Tu Fu
was the younger of the two. They slept together under
one coverlet (so he tells us in one of his poems), and
went hand in hand like two brothers.[2]
Li Po traveled south to the lands of Wu and Yueh
of old to wander amid the ruins of once glorious palaces
and among the lakes of lotus lilies, and chose to
for the beauty of its hills and valleys. Here he met Wu
Yun, scholar and Taoist, who on being summoned to
court took Li Po with him to Chang-an, the capital of
the empire.
It was about the year 742 that Li Po entered Chang-an,
the golden metropolis, when the long prosperous years
of the Tien-pao era had just begun, and the court of
Hsuan Tsung had reached the pinacle of brilliance.
Li Po went to see Ho Chi-chang, a guest of the crown
prince, and showed his poems. The jovial courtier was
so pleased that he bartered his gold ornament for wine
and entertained the new-comer. Moreover, he commended
the poet to the emperor. "I have in my house,"
he said, "probably the greatest poet that ever existed.
I have not dared to speak of him to your Majesty because
of his one defect, which is rather difficult to correct:
he drinks, and drinks sometimes to excess. But
his poems are beautiful. Judge them for yourself,
sire!" So saying, he thrust in Hsuan Tsung's hand a
bundle of manuscript. "Fetch me the author of these
poems!" spoke the emperor instantly—so runs one story.
But according to other versions it was Wu Yun, or
Princess Yu-chen, who introduced Li Po to the court.
At any rate, the poet was given an audience in the Hall
of Gold Bells. His discourse and ode at once won the
admiration of the emperor, so that he feasted the poet
at the Table of the Seven Jewels and assigned him to
the Han-ling Academy. That is, Li Po was placed under
imperial patronage, without any special duties but
to write occasional poems, of which the ninth piece in
the present book is an example.
He banqueted with lords and ladies in and out of the
But who were his boon companions? A vivid portrayal
of that much celebrated company, the "Eight Immortals
of the Wine-cup," whose revels were the talk of
Chang-an, is happily preserved for us in an equally celebrated
poem by Tu Fu.
As on a reeling ship.
Should he, blear-eyed, tumble into a well,
He would lie in the bottom, fast asleep.
Ju-yang Prince must have three jugfuls
Ere he goes up to court.
How copiously his royal mouth waters
As a brewer's cart passes by!
It's a pity, he mournfully admits,
That he is not the lord of Wine Spring.
Our minister Li squanders at the rate
Of ten thousand tsen per day;
He inhales like a great whale,
Gulping one hundred rivers;
And with a cup in his hand insists,
He loves the Sage and avoids the Wise.
Tsung-chi a handsome youth, fastidious,
Disdains the rabble,
But turns his gaze toward the blue heaven,
Holding his beloved bowl.
Radiant is he like a tree of jade,
That stands against the breeze.
Su Chin, the religious, cleanses his soul
Before his painted Buddha.
But his long rites must needs be interrupted
As oft he loves to go on a spree.
As for Li Po, give him a jugful,
He will write one hundred poems.
He drowses in a wine-shop
And though his sovereign calls,
He will not board the imperial barge.
"Please your Majesty," says he,
"I am a god of wine."
Chang Hsu is a caligrapher of renown,
Three cups makes him the master.
He throws off his cap, baring his pate
Unceremoniously before princes,
And wields his inspired brush, and lo!
Wreaths of cloud roll on the paper.
Chao Sui, another immortal, elate
After full five jugfuls,
Is eloquent of heroic speech—
The wonder of all the feasting hall.
One day in spring Hsuan Tsung with Lady Yang
Kuei-fei held a royal feast in the Pavilion of Aloes.
The tree-peonies of the garden, newly imported from
India, were in full flower as if in rivalry of beauty with
the emperor's voluptuous mistress. There were the musicians
of the Pear Garden and the wine of grapes
from Hsi-liang. Li Po was summoned, for only his
art could capture for eternity the glory of the vanishing
hours. But when brought to the imperial presence,
the poet was drunk. Court attendants threw cold water
on his face and handed him a writing brush. Whereupon
he improvised those three beautiful songs[3] in rapturous
praise of Yang Kuei-fei, which were sung by the
famous vocalist, Li Kuei-nien, while the emperor himself
played the tune on a flute of jade.
But it was one of these very songs,[4] according to a
widely accepted tradition, that helped cut short the gay
the powerful eunuch, who had been greatly humiliated
by having been ordered to pull off Li Po's shoes
once as the latter became drunk at the palace, persuaded
Yang Kuei-fei that the poet had intended a malicious
satire in his poem by comparing her with Lady
Flying Swallow, who was a famous court beauty of the
Han dynasty, but who was unfaithful and never attained
the rank of empress. This was enough to turn gratitude
to venomous hate, and Yang Kuei-fei interfered whenever
the emperor sought to appoint the poet to office.
There is another tradition that Li Po incurred the displeasure
of Hsuan Tsung through the intrigue of a
fellow courtier. This story is also plausible. Li Po
was not the sort of man fitted for the highly artificial
life of the court, where extreme urbanity, tact and dissimulation,
were essential to success. He soon expressed
a desire to return to the mountains; and the
emperor presented him with a purse and allowed him to
depart. He was then forty-five years old, and had sojourned
in the capital for three years.
Once more Li Po took to the roads. He wandered
about the country for ten years, "now sailing one thousand
li in a day, now tarrying a whole year at a place,
enjoying the beauty thereof." He went up northeast
to Chinan-fu of Shantung to receive the Taoist diploma
from the "high heavenly priest of Pei-hai." He journeyed
south and met Tsui Tsung-chi, the handsome Immortal
of the Wine-cup, who had been banished from
the capitol and was an official at the city of Nanking.
The old friendship was renewed, and withal the glad
old time. It is related that one moonlight night they
took a river journey down the Yangtze from Tsai-hsi
palace robes and sat in the boat, laughing aloud, and
rolling his frenzied eyes. Was it the laughter of wanton
revelry, or of self-derision, or of haughty scorn at the
foolish world that could not fathom his soul? In 754
Wei Hao, a young friend of his, came to meet him at
Kuang-ling, Kiangsu Province, and traveled with him
a while. To him Li Po entrusted a bundle of his
poems, saying, "Pray remember your old man! Surely
in the future I'll acquire a great fame."
Next year, in March of 755, we discover him fleeing
from the city of Lo-yang amid the confusion of the war
of An Lu-shan, whose troops occupied the city and made
the waters of the Lo River flow crimson with blood. The
poet went down to the province of Chehkiang, and finally
retired to the mountains of Luh near Kiu-kiang in
Kiangsi Province. When Li Ling, the Prince of Yung, became
the governor-general of the four provinces near the
mouth of the Yangtze, Li Po joined his staff. But the subsequent
revolt and the quick fall of the Prince in 757 lead
to imprisonment of the poet at the city of Kiu-kiang, with
a sentence of death hanging over him. On examination
of the case officials were inclined to leniency. One of
them, Sung Ssu-jo, recommended the emperor not only
to pardon Li Po but to give him a high place in the government
service. But the memorial, which by the way
had been written by Li Po himself at Sung's direction,
failed to reach its destination. Then Kuo Tsu-i, now a
popular hero with his brilliant war record, came to
the rescue; he petitioned that Li Po's life might be ransomed
with his own rank and title. The white head of
the poet was saved, and he was sentenced to perpetual
banishment at Yeh-lang—the extreme southwest region
He proceeded westward up the river leisurely. There
seems to have been little pressure from the central government,
certainly no inclination on the part of the
poet, to expedite the journey. At Wu-chang he was welcomed
by the local governor Wei, with whom he spent
months and climbed the Yellow Crane House three times.
Further up he encountered Chia-chi, his former companion
at Chang-an, and Li Hua, a kinsman of his. These
two had also been demoted and dismissed from the
capital. The three luckless men now joined in a boat
party more than once on the Tung-ting Lake under the
clear autumn moon. That these were not so lugubrious
affairs after all is attested by their poems.[5] After such
delays and digressions Li Po sailed up the Yangtze
through the Three Gorges and arrived in Wu-shan, Ssu-chuan,
in 759, when amnesty was declared.
The old poet started homeward, resting a while at
Yo-chou and Chiang-hsia, and returning to Kiu-kiang
again. He visited Nanking once more in 761; and next
year went to live with his kinsman, Li Yang-ping, who
was magistrate of Tang-tu, the present city of Taiping
in Anhwei. Here in the same year he sickened and died.
A legend has it that Li Po was drowned in the river
near Tsai-shih as he attempted, while drunken, to embrace
the reflection of the moon in the water. This was
Théodore Pavie. This story, quoted by d'Hervey Saint
Denys, is altogether too beautiful to omit. I retranslate
the passage from the French:
"The moon that night was shining like day. Li Tai-po
was supping on the river when all of a sudden there
was heard in the mid-air a concert of harmonious voices,
which sounded nearer and nearer to the boat. Then,
the water rose in a great tumult, and lo! there appeared
in front of Li Tai-po dolphins which stood on their
tails, waving their fins, and two children of immortality
carrying in their hands the banners to indicate the
way. They had come in behalf of the lord of the
heavens to invite the poet to return and resume his
place in the celestial realm. His companions on the
boat saw the poet depart, sitting on the back of a dolphin
while the harmonious voices guided the cortège. . . .
Soon they vanished altogether in the mist."
As to Li Po's family and domestic life the curiosity
of the western mind has to go unsatisfied. The Chinese
biographers never bother about such trivialities of a
man's private affairs. The Old and the New Books of
Tang are both totally silent. Only in his preface to
the collection of the poet's works Wei Hao remarks:
"Po first married a Hsu and had a daughter and a son,
who was called the Boy of the Bright Moon. The
daughter died after her marriage. Po also took to wife
a Liu. The Liu was divorced, and he next was united
to a woman of Luh, by whom he had a child, named
Po-li. He finally married a Sung."
Hsu, Liu, and Sung are all family names of the women
poems extant, addressed to his "wife," it is difficult to
tell just which one is meant in each case. From a poem[7]
written to his children we learn that the girl's name was
Ping-yang, and the son whom Wei Hao refers to by the
unusual nickname of the "Boy of the Bright Moon," was
called Po-chin. Of the third child, Po-li, mentioned by
Wei Hao, there is no reference elsewhere. Po-chin died
without having obtained any official appointment in 793.
His one son wandered away from home; while his two
daughters were married to peasants.
Although Li Po had expressed his desire of making the
Green Hill at a short distance southeast of Taiping-fu
his last resting place, he was buried at the "East Base"
of the Dragon Hill. His kinsman, Li Hua, wrote the
inscription on his tombstone. Twenty-nine years after
the poet's death a governor of Tang-tu set up a monument.
But by the second decade of the ninth century
when another great poet, Po Chu-i, came to visit the
grave, he found it in the grass of a fallow field. About
the same time Fan Chuan-cheng, inspector of these districts,
discovered the "burial mound three feet high, fast
crumbling away"; he located the two grandaughters of
Li Po among the peasantry, and on learning the true
wish of the poet, removed the grave to the north side of
the Green Hill and erected two monuments in January
of 818.
IV
The Old Book of Tang says that Li Po "possessed a
superior talent, a great and tameless spirit, and fantastical
he was a romanticist.
Like Wordsworth he sought the solitude of hills and
lakes. But he was a lover rather than a worshipper of
Nature. He was "enamored of the hills," he says. To
him the cloud-girt peak of Luh Shan, or the hollow glen
of autumn, was not a temple but a home where he felt
most at ease and free to do as he pleased—where he
drank, sang, slept, and meditated. He spent a large
part of his life out of doors, on the roads, among the
flowering trees, and under the stars, writing his innumerable
poems, which are the spontaneous utterances of his
soul, responding, to the song of a mango bird or to the
call of far waterfalls. And his intimate Nature-feeling
gained him admission to a world other than ours, of
which he writes:
I laugh and answer not. My soul is serene.
It dwells in another heaven and earth belonging to no man—
The peach trees are in flower, and the water flows on. . . .
Taoism with its early doctrine of inaction and with
its later fanciful superstitions of celestial realms,
and supernatural beings and of death-conquering herbs
and pellets fascinated the poet. Confucian critics, eager
to whitewash him of any serious Taoistic contamination,
declare that he was simply playing with the new-fangled
heresy. But there is no doubt as to his earnestness.
"At fifteen," he writes, "I sought gods and goblins."
The older he grew, the stronger became the hold of
of Confucian ethics was alien both to his temperament
and to the circumstances of his life. The first thing he
did after his dismissal from the court was to go to Chinan-fu
and receive the Taoist diploma from the high
priest of the sect, "wishing only (says Li Yang-ping) to
return east to Peng-lai and with the winged men ride to
the Scarlet Hill of Immortality." Peng-lai is the paradisical
land of the Taoist, somewhere in the eastern sea.
The poetry of Li Po reflects the gleams of such visionary
worlds. His "Dream of the Sky-land,"[8] rivaling Kubla
Khan in its transcendent beauty and imaginative power,
could not have been written but by Li Po, the Taoist.
Even in superstition and opium there is more than a
Confucian philosophy dreams of.
But mysticism and solitude filled only one half of the
poet's life. For he loved dearly the town and tavern—
so much so that he is censured again by moralists as having
been sordid. Li Po not only took too hearty an interest
in wine and women, but he was also scandalously
frank in advertising his delight by singing their praise in
sweet and alluring terms. In this respect Li Po, like so
many of his associates, was a thorough Elizabethan. Had
the Eight Immortals of the Wine-cup descended from
their Chinese Elysium to the Mermaid Tavern, how happy
they would have been with their doughty rivals in song,
humor, wit, capacity for wine, and ardent and adventurous,
if at times erratic, spirit!
Li Po "ate like a hungry tiger," says Wei Hao, who
should know; while according to another authority, "his
big voice could be heard in heaven." In his early youth
he exhibited a swashbuckling propensity, took to errantry,
several combatants with his cutlass.
"Though less than seven feet in height, I am strong
enough to meet ten thousand men," he boasted. It is
hardly necessary, however, to point out the rare and
lovable personality of the poet, who made friends with
everybody—lord or prince, Buddhist or Taoist, courtier
or scholar, country gentlemen or town brewer; and
addressed with the same affectionate regard alike the emperor
in the palace and the poor singing-girl on the
city street of Chang-an.
In his mature age Li Po, despite his natural inclination
and temperament, cherished the normal Chinese ambition
to serve the state in a high official capacity and
try the empire-builder's art.[9] It was with no small anticipation
that he went to the court and discoursed on the
affairs of the government before the emperor. But he
was only allowed to write poems and cover his vexations
with the cloak of dissipation. Later when amid the
turmoil of the civil war he was called to join the powerful
Prince of Yung, his aspirations revived, only to be
smothered in the bitterness of defeat and banishment.
The last few years of his life were pathetic. Broken in
spirit and weary with the burden of sorrow and age, but
with his patriotic fervor still burning in his heart, he
watched with anxiety the sorry plight of his country.
Worrying ever over the great empire's affairs.
The rebellion of An Lu-shan and its aftermath were
not wholly quelled till the very year of the poet's death.
Then, there was the inevitable pessimism of the old
world. The thought of the evanescence of all temporal
things brought him solace for life's disappointments, and
at the same time subdued his great tameless spirit. The
Chinese race was already old at Li Po's time, with a retrospect
of milleniums on whose broad expanse the dynasties
of successive ages were like bubbles. What
Shakespeare came to realize in his mellowed years
about the "cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces," was
an obsession that seized on Li Po early in life. Thus it
is that a pensive mood pervades his poetry, and many of
his Bacchanalian verses are tinged with melancholy.
Even when he is singing exultantly at a banquet table, his
saddest thought will out, saying "Hush, hush! All
things pass with the waters of the east-flowing river."
POEMS BY LI PO
[OMITTED]
1. ON THE SHIP OF SPICE-WOOD
Musicians sit at the two ends with jeweled bamboo flutes and pipes of gold.
What a pleasure it is, with a cask of sweet wine
And singing girls beside me,
To drift on the water hither and thither with the waves!
I am happier than the fairy of the air, who rode on his yellow crane.
And free as the merman who followed the sea-gulls aimlessly.
Now with the strokes of my inspired pen I shake the Five Mountains.
My poem is done, I laugh and my delight is vaster than the sea.
Oh, deathless poetry! The songs of Chu-ping are ever glorious as the sun and moon,
While the palaces and towers of the Chu kings have vanished from the hills.
Yea, if worldly fame and riches were things to last forever,
The waters of the River Han would flow north-westward, too.
The poet is in his typical mood. The poem is a manifesto of his happy triumphant existence of freedom and of sensual and poetical indulgence.
Mu-lan is the name of a precious wood.
Chu-ping, or Chu Yuan, 332-295 B.C., was a loyal minister under Huai-wang, the ruler of the Chu state. He is celebrated for his poems, which include the famous Li Sao.
The river Han is a large tributary of the Yangtze, which originates in Shensi and flows southwestward through Hupeh, joining the main stream at Hankow.
[OMITTED]
2. A SUMMER DAY
Too lazy to wave my white feathered fan.
I hang my cap on a crag,
And bare my head to the wind that comes
Blowing through the pine trees.
[OMITTED]
3. NOCTURNE
In the moonlight the white herons are flying.
Listen! Do you hear the girls who gather water-chestnuts?
They are going home in the night, singing.
[OMITTED]
4. A FAREWELL SONG OF WHITE CLOUDS
As over the mountains of Chin.
Everywhere the white clouds will follow you on.
With you they will enter the Chu mountains,
And cross the waters of the Hsiang.
There is a cloak of ivy to wear,
And you may lie in a bed of white clouds.
[OMITTED]
5. THE LONG-DEPARTED LOVER
Fair one, now you are gone—only an empty couch is left.
On the couch the embroidered quilt is rolled up; I cannot sleep.
It is three years since you went. The perfume you left behind haunts me still.
I sigh—the yellow leaves fall from the branch,
I weep—the dew twinkles white on the green mosses.
[OMITTED]
6. LADY YANG KUEI-FEI AT THE IMPERIAL
FEAST OF THE PEONY—I
And the radiance of a flower on her face.
O heavenly apparition, found only far above
On the top of the Mountain of Many Jewels,
Or in the fairy Palace of Crystal when the moon is up!
Yet I see her here in the earth's garden—
The spring wind softly sweeps the balustrade,
And the dew-drops glisten thickly. . . .
As to the occasion on which these songs were composed, see the Introduction.
The Mountain of Many Jewels is the abode of the fairy queen, Hsi-wang-mo; the Palace of Crystal is another such fabled home of beautiful spirits.
[OMITTED]
7. LADY YANG KUEI-FEI AT THE IMPERIAL
FEAST OF THE PEONY—II
Richly-laden with honey-dew.
Hers is the charm of the vanished fairy,
That broke the heart of the dreamer king
In the old legend of the Cloud and Rain.
Pray, who in the palace of Han
Could be likened unto her,
Save the lady, Flying Swallow, newly-dressed
In all her loveliness?
The Legend of Cloud and Rain: King Hsiang of Chu once in his dream saw a fairy maid whose loveliness captivated his heart instantly, and who, on being asked who she was, replied, "In the morning I am the cloud, in the evening the rain on the Wu mountains," and vanished. The amorous king pined for the cloud and rain, morning and evening ever after.
Chao Fei-yen or Lady Flying Swallow, was a singing girl of Chang-an, but her charm won the love of the emperor Cheng-ti of the Han dynasty, who took her up to the palace and made her an imperial concubine of the highest rank. She is famous for her frail beauty. It is said that she was of so slight a build that she could dance on the palm of the hand. She lived in the 1st century B. C.
[OMITTED]
8. LADY YANG KUEI-FEI AT THE IMPERIAL
FEAST OF THE PEONY—III
Of Chen-hsiang Ting, the Pavilion of Aloes.
Vanquished are the endless longings of Love
Borne into the heart on the wind of spring.
The radiant flower and the flowery queen rejoice together,
For the emperor deigns to watch them ever with a smile.
[OMITTED]
9. A POEM COMPOSED AT THE IMPERIAL
COMMAND IN THE SPRING GARDEN, WHILE
LOOKING ON THE NEWLY GREEN WILLOWS
BY THE DRAGON POND AND LISTENING
TO THE HUNDRED-FOLD
NOTES OF THE FIRST NIGHTINGALES
The spring-sweetness is about the purple palaces and crimson towers.
The willows on the south of the pond have turned half-green,
They grow like delicate wreaths of mist
By the resplendent castle,
Their thread-like branches, one hundred feet long,
Dangling about the carved and painted pillars.
While high above the sweet birds sing melodiously together—
They sing with hearts stirred early by the spring wind,
Which rolls itself in the blue clouds and dies.
By a thousand gateways and by ten thousand doorways.
At Hao-king, where my lord, the emperor, tarries,
Five colored clouds are brightening
Against the lucid purple of the sky.
The imperial cortege comes forth, agleam in the sun.
Coming forth from the golden palace,
The imperial car bedecked with jewels
Glides along the path of flowers,
Where cranes are seen gracefully dancing,
Then, returning to the garden of Yi-shih,
Where the first songs of nightingales are heard—
They sing high among the trees,
Desiring to mingle their notes with the mouth-organs,
And join the imperial concert of the phoenix-flutes.
[OMITTED]
10. TO HIS FRIEND DEPARTING FOR SHUH
Is rough and rugged, and hard to travel.
It is so steep that the mountains rise
In front of the rider's face,
And the clouds gather about the horse's head.
But there you will find the plank-highway of Chin
Canopied in fragrant foliage,
And the sweet water of springtime
Flowing around the city wall of Shuh.
Go, my friend! Our destiny's decided. . . .
You need not bother to ask Chuan-ping, the fortune-teller.
Tsan-tsung is one of the mythical rulers of Shuh, or the present Ssuchuan.
Chuan-ping was a fortune teller of Chengtu under the Han dynasty. As soon as he had earned a hundred pence, he would close his shop and busy himself with writing books.
[OMITTED]
11. TO HIS THREE FRIENDS
Tigers and dragons are left uncaught.
Even so, men of blue-cloud ambition remain unsought,
Singing aloud at the door of their rocky den.
Pei, you possess a true clean breast;
And Kung, you, too, are an excellent man;
And all you three are lovers of cloud and mist.
Your stout and straight souls
Are loftier than the loftiest pine.
A flat boulder for a bed, you sleep together under one cover;
You hack the ice and sip water from the winter stream;
You own two pairs of shoes to wear among you three.
Like the vagrant clouds,
You came out of the mountains to greet the governor.
Indifferently you wore cap and mantle a while,
Whistling long.
And enjoying, you say, the moon of the Bamboo Valley.
This morning outside the east gate of Luh
We spread the tent and drink the farewell cup.
The cliffs are snowy, and your horses may slip;
Pray remember,
My thoughts of longing are like the smoke grass,
That grows always in profusion, winter or spring!
The three friends were Han Chun, Pei Cheng, and Kung Chao-fu, all of whom were members of the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Valley." These men were returning to the mountains after a brief and unsuccessful official career under the local governor, and Li Po wrote this parting poem.
[OMITTED]
12. ADDRESSED HUMOROUSLY TO TU FU
Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?
How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!
You must have been suffering from poetry again.
In contrast with Li Po, who depended largely on inspiration, Tu Fu was a painstaking artist careful of the minutest details.
[OMITTED]
13. ON A PICTURE SCREEN
Have they flown into the gorgeous screen
From heaven's one corner?
Those palaces of Yang-tai, hovering yonder—
Oh, the melancholy of it!—
Where the jeweled couch of the king
With brocade covers is desolate,—
His elfin maid voluptuously fair
Still haunting them in vain!
Seem a thousand miles.
The craggy walls glisten blue and red,
A piece of dazzling embroidery.
How green those distant trees are
Round the river strait of Ching-men!
And those ships—they go on,
Floating on the waters of Pa.
The water sings over the rocks
Between countless hills
Of shining mist and lustrous grass.
To smile in the sun?
And that man traveling on the river,
Hears he not for ages the monkeys screaming?
Loses himself in eternity;
And entering the sacred mountains of Sung,
He will dream among the resplendent clouds.
The screen was owned by his Buddhist friend, Yuan Tan-chiu, to whom Li Po has written innumerable poems. See No. 99.
The Wu-shan peaks are along the Yangtze gorges in Ssuchuan. The second stanza refers to the Legend of the Cloud and Rain. See the note under No. 7.
[OMITTED]
14. ON ASCENDING THE NORTH TOWER ONE
AUTUMN DAY
The sky is lucid above the mountain shrouded in evening gloom,
While the waters on either hand shine like mirrors;
Two painted bridges span them like rainbows dropt from the sky.
The smoke from the cottages curls up around the citron trees,
And the hues of late autumn are on the green paulownias.
Who ever dreamed of my coming hither to the North Tower
To brood over the memory of Prince Hsieh, while the wind blows in my face?
The North Tower was built by Hsieh Tiao of the 5th century, a statesman and a poet of South Chi dynasty.
It is located in the city of Hsuan-cheng, Anhwei.
[OMITTED]
15. THE SUMMIT TEMPLE
Here I could pluck the stars with my hand,
I dare not speak aloud in the silence,
For fear of disturbing the dwellers of heaven.
The temple is in a district in Hupeh, so isolated from the outside world that this poem of Li Po, written on a painted board and left on the beams of the ceiling, remained unmolested for centuries until it was discovered by a local magistrate, thus settling a dispute over its authorship which had arisen in the meantime, some attributing the poem to a certain Yang, who was born mute— the story runs—but on being taken to a high tower one day when he was only a boy of a few years, composed and uttered this poem, of which the first line reads:
"A precipitous tower, one hundred feet high!"
[OMITTED]
16. LAO-LAO TING, A TAVERN
O Lao-lao Ting, tavern where every heart must ache.
Here even the wind of spring knows the pain of parting,
And will not let the willow branches grow green.
The tavern was situated on a hill-top just outside the city of Nanking; and people seeing their friends off came as far as this place to exchange parting cups.
The last line alludes to the Chinese custom of breaking off a willow branch and presenting it to a departing friend.
[OMITTED]
17. THE NIGHT OF SORROW
The delicate bamboo blind.
She sits deep within,
Twitching her moth eyebrows.
Who may it be
That grieves her heart?
On her face one sees
Only the wet traces of tears.
[OMITTED]
18. THE SORROW OF THE JEWEL STAIRCASE
And wets her silken shoes. The night is far gone.
She turns within, lets fall the crystal curtain,
And gazes up at the autumn moon, shining through.
[OMITTED]
19. THE GIRL OF PA SPEAKS
The boat on the River Pa slips away
As if it had wings.
It will travel in ten days three thousand li.
And you are going, my dear—
Ah, how many years before you return?
[OMITTED]
20. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—I
Her face is prettier than star or moon,
And white like frost her feet in sandals—
She does not wear the crow-head covers.
In these poems Li Po records what he saw of the "southern" girls in Kiangsu and Chehkiang. These provinces were under the king of Yueh in the 5th and 6th centuries, B. C.
Chang-kan is near the city of Nanking, and was at Li Po's time inhabited by the lower class of people.
The crowhead covers are a kind of shoes worn by the upper-class women of the north. So named on account of their shape and very small size—small feet seem to have been already at a premium. "It is interesting," remarks a native critic demurely, "to note Li Po's admiration for a barefoot woman."
[OMITTED]
21. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—II
Often she will steer her shallop and play.
In her coquettish eyes
Lurks the lure of the spring-time.
She will pluck the flowers of the water
For amorous wayfarers.
[OMITTED]
22. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—III
She spies a passer-by, and turns round,
Singing her boat song.
She laughs, and hides away among the lilies;
And seeming shy, she will not show her face again.
[OMITTED]
23. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—IV
He, a boatman of Kuei-chi, is in his boat.
The moon has not set.
They look at each other—broken-hearted.
[OMITTED]
24. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—V
Is clear like the moon.
The girl of Yeh-chi
Has a face white as snow.
Her silvery image
Trembles in the silvery ripple. . . .
[OMITTED]
25. THE SOLITUDE OF NIGHT
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
[OMITTED]
26. THE MONUMENT OF TEARS
The water is blue and its and shines like snow.
There on the mountain top stands the Monument of Tears,
Long weathered and covered up with green mosses.
The Mountain of Hsien is in Hupeh, near the city of Hsiang-yang. Once in the reign of the Chin dynasty (3rd century), Yang Hu, the governor of this district, a man of benevolence, climbed the mountain to view the fair landscape below. Amid the feasting and verse-making, the governor turned to his companions and said: "This mountain has stood here since the beginning of the world; and many famous men of virtue and wisdom have come up to this spot, as we ourselves. Now they are all gone and forgotten. Soon we shall be, too." So saying, he shed tears. Later the people erected a monument there. It is this that Li Po found "covered up with green mosses."
[OMITTED]
27. ON A QUIET NIGHT
And wondered if it were not the frost on the ground.
I raised my head and looked out on the mountain moon;
I bowed my head and thought of my far-off home.
[OMITTED]
28. THE BLUE WATER
He is out on the South Lake,
Gathering white lilies.
The lotus flowers seem to whisper love,
And fill the boatman's heart with sadness.
[OMITTED]
29. THE CHING-TING MOUNTAIN
A solitary drift of cloud, too, has gone, wandering on.
And I sit alone with the Ching-ting Peak, towering beyond.
We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I.
[OMITTED]
30. WITH A MAN OF LEISURE
We drink together, you and I.
One more cup—one more cup—still one more cup!
Now I am drunk and drowsy, you had better go.
But come to-morrow morning, if you will, with the harp!
[OMITTED]
31. THE YO-MEI MOUNTAIN MOON
Its pale light falls in and flows with the water of the Ping-chiang River.
To-night I leave Ching-chi of the limpid stream for the Three Canyons,
And glide down past Yu-chow, thinking of you whom I can not see.
This is one of the most famous poems in all Chinese literature; and it is needless to say that the translation does a gross injustice to the original verse, which combines the beauty of a fluent language with the wealth of charming associations that the proper names possess, which, by the way, take up 12 of the 28 ideographs that compose the whole poem.
The mountain and stream are all located in Ssuchuan.
[OMITTED]
32. ON THE CITY STREET
He raises his gold crop high in salute.
"Lady," says he, "where do you live?
"There are ten thousand houses among the drooping willow trees."
[OMITTED]
33. ON THE DEATH OF THE GOOD BREWER OF
HSUAN-CHENG
Well, I imagine you are still brewing the "Old Springtime."
But since there's no Li Po on the Terrace of Night,
To what sort of people do you sell your wine?
A Chinese tradition has it that in Hades there is a spring, whose water is yellow. "The Yellow Spring" in Chinese has long become a proper name, referring to the world beyond.
"Terrace of Night" is another Chinese phrase for the land of the dead.
"The Old Springtime," a brand of rice wine. The Tang people named their rice wine frequently after the season of spring. Tu Fu mentions a "Rice Spring."
[OMITTED]
34. TO HIS WIFE
Drunk I lie, like mud every day.
Though you're married to Tai-po, wife,
You might as well have been the Tai-chang's spouse.
Tai-chang is the title of a religious officer in the government of the Han dynasty. Here a Tai-chang of the latter Han dynasty is alluded to, who was noted for his wine-bibbing propensity.
[OMITTED]
35. THE POET THINKS OF HIS OLD HOME
I wonder how many times the roses have bloomed there. . . .
The white clouds gather and scatter again like friends.
Who has a house there now to view the setting of the bright moon?
The East Mountain (Tung Shan), in Chehkiang. Hsieh An, the poet-governor of the 4th century under the Chin dynasty, whom Li Po admired immensely, had resided here.
[OMITTED]
36. SORROW OF THE LONG GATE PALACE—I
And now hangs over the west tower.
In the Golden House there are none
Save the fireflies sailing the gloom,
While the moonlight falls
Into the Palace of Long Gate,
And deepens still more the sorrow of one in the secret bower.
Lady Chen who was queen to Wu-ti, a Han emperor, lost his favor and was left in the solitude of the Long Palace Gate to pine alone. Later at the imperial harem of China, the "Sorrow of the Long Gate" became a stock-phrase and served as a title for love poems of grief under similar circumstances.
The Northern Dipper, i. e. Ursa Major.
The Golden House always refers to a palace for the fair sex.
[OMITTED]
37. SORROW OF THE LONG GATE PALACE—II
At the laurel bower where sorrow is long;
But on the four walls of gold
The autumn dust clings like grief;
And night holds the bright mirror up in the emerald sky
For the lonely one in the Palace of Long Gate.
[OMITTED]
38. AN ENCOUNTER IN THE FIELD
Trampling the fallen flowers of the road.
The dangling end of his crop
Brushes a passing carriage of five-colored clouds.
The jeweled curtain is raised,
A beautiful woman smiles within—
"That is my house," she whispers,
Pointing to a pink house beyond.
[OMITTED]
39. TO WANG LUN
When suddenly I heard
The sound of stamping and singing on the bank—
It was you and your friends come to bid me farewell.
The Peach Flower Lake is a thousand fathoms deep,
But it cannot compare, O Wang Lun
With the depth of your love for me.
The Peach Flower Lake is the name of the water as well as of the village on its shore. Here Li Po spent some time, enjoying the hospitality of Wang Lun who had always a supply of good wine. At the departure of the poet the host came out to the waterside to bid farewell in the manner described in the poem.
[OMITTED]
40. ON SEEING OFF MENG HAO-JAN
And went down eastward to Willow Valley
Amid the flowers and mists of March.
The lonely sail in the distance
Vanished at last beyond the blue sky.
And I could see only the river
Flowing along the border of heaven.
The Yellow Crane House stood till a recent date not far from the city of Wu-chang, Hupeh, on a hill overlooking the Yangtze-kiang.
Once upon a time a dead man of Shuh, traveling on the back of a yellow crane, stopped here to rest. Hence the name of the house.
There is another interesting story just as authentic, according to which: there stood here a tavern kept by a man whose name was Chin, to whom one day a tall rugged professor in rags came and asked very complacently, "I haven't money, will you give me wine?" The tavern keeper was game; he readily offered to the stranger the biggest tumbler and allowed him to help himself to all the wine he wanted day after day for half a year. At last the professor said to Chin, "I owe you some wine money. I'll pay you now." So saying, he took lemon peels and with it smeared on the wall a picture of a yellow crane, which at the clapping of his hands came to life and danced to the tune of his song. The spectacle soon brought a fortune to the tavern-keeper; he became a millionaire. Then, the professor left, flying away on his bird, whither no one knew. The grateful tavern-keeper built the tower-house in commemoration thereof, and called it the Yellow Crane House.
Willow Valley (Yang-chow), in Kiangsu.
[OMITTED]
41. ON BEING ASKED WHO HE IS
I am a spirit exiled from the upper blue;
For thirty years I've hid my fame in wine shops.
Warrior of Lake Province, why must you ask about me?
Behold me, a reincarnation of the Buddha of Golden Grain!
The Warrior of Lake Province happened to be a Buddhist and the speaker of the assembly of his sect. Hence, Li Po's witticism in referring to the Buddhist theology.
[OMITTED]
42. IN THE MOUNTAINS
I laugh and answer not, my soul is serene:
It dwells in another heaven and earth belonging to no man.
The peach trees are in flower, and the water flows on. . . .
[OMITTED]
43. THE FAIR QUEEN OF WU
All fragrance is the waterside pavilion.
The king of Wu is feasting on the Ku-su Tower.
Hsi-shih, the queen, flushed with wine, dances—
She is fair and unresisting.
Now, smiling, she leans near the east window
Against a couch of white jade.
Hsi-shih (5th century B. C.) was queen to Fu Chai, the king of Wu, and is one of the most famous court beauties of China. Her dalliance cost the king his kingdom as well as his life.
[OMITTED]
44. WHILE JOURNEYING
Come, fill my precious glass, and let it glow in amber!
If you can only make me drunk, mine host, it is enough;
No longer shall I know the sorrow of a strange land.
[OMITTED]
45. THE RUIN OF THE KU-SU PALACE
The willows show green again,
While the sweet notes of the water-nut song
Seem to lament the spring.
Nothing remains but the moon above the river—
The moon that once shone on the fair faces
That smiled in the king's palace of Wu.
The Ku-su Palace is where King Fu-chai of Wu with his beautiful queen Hsi-shih held perpetual revelries till King Kou Chien of Yueh annihilated him. It was located in the present city of Soo Chow, which was the capital of Wu. See No. 43.
[OMITTED]
46. THE RUIN OF THE CAPITAL
OF YUEH
He had destroyed the kingdom of Wu.
His loyal men came home in brilliance of brocade,
And the women of the court thronged the palace
Like flowers that fill the spring—
Now only a flock of patridges are flying in the twilight.
[OMITTED]
47. THE RIVER JOURNEY FROM
WHITE KING CITY
Towering among the many colored clouds;
And came down stream in a day
One thousand li to Chiang-ling.
The screams of monkeys on either bank
Had scarcely ceased echoing in my ear
When my skiff had left behind it
Ten thousand ranges of hills.
The White King City is in Ssuchuan, and Chiang-ling in Hupeh. The distance between the two places is several hundred miles, but the river flows so swiftly that the down stream journey may be accomplished in a day.
[OMITTED]
48. BY THE GREAT WALL—I
Out went the imperial army from the House of Han.
The general has divided the tiger tallies,
And the dunes of White Dragon are now
The camping ground of the brave.
The moon in the wilderness
Follows the movement of his bow,
And upon his sword the desert frost blossoms.
He has not even entered this side of the Jewel Gate Pass.
But do not heave a long sigh, O little wife!
These poems tell the longing and the sorrow of young wives, whose husbands are fighting the barbarians in a distant land—a common theme for Tang poets.
The tiger tallies were used as a means of army registration. These were distributed among the soldiers prior to their departure for the front, while the counterparts were preserved at the headquarters.
The Jewel Gate Pass in western Kansu was located, according to the old Chinese geography, 3600 li west of Chang-an.
[OMITTED]
49. BY THE GREAT WALL—II
She wanders in dreams amid the desert cloud and sand.
It is a season of sorrow that she scarce can endure,
Thinking of her soldier lover at the border fort.
The fireflies, flitting about, swarm at her window,
While the moon slowly passes over her solitary bower.
The leaves of the green paulonia are tattered;
And the branches of the sha-tung blasted and sere.
There is not an hour but she, alone, unseen,
Weeps—only to learn how futile all her tears are.
[OMITTED]
50. THE IMPERIAL CONCUBINE
She was reared in a golden house,
Now ripe and lovely, she dwells
In the imperial palace of purple.
She will come forth from the innermost chamber,
A mountain flower in her glossy hair,
Robed in pink embroidered silk;
And always return at evening,
Accompanying the imperial palanquin.
Only, alas!— the hours of dance and song
Swiftly vanish into the sky
To tint, perhaps, the flying clouds in happy colors!
One of the eight poems entitled "Palace Pleasures," which Li Po composed during his sojourn at the court. They describe the voluptuous life of Hsuan Tsung with Yang Kuei-fei.
[OMITTED]
51. PARTING AT CHING-MEN
I have come with you into the land of Chu.
Here ends the mountain-range that stretches along the plain,
While the river flowing on, enters the distant heavens.
Now under the moon like a mirror flying through the sky,
And the rising clouds that build palaces and towers,
I bid you farewell. Ten thousand li you sail away,
But it is the waters of the home river that bear you on.
[OMITTED]
52. ON THE YO-YANG TOWER WITH
HIS FRIEND, CHIA
The whole fair region of Yo-yang,
And the winding river
Opening into the Tung-ting Lake.
Take away with you the sorrow of the heart!
And, come, thou mountain, give us thy happy moon!
And tarry a while with the clouds
And pass the cup high above the world of cares.
Then, thou cooling breeze, arise!
Come and blow as we dance!
And our sleeves will flap like wings.
The Yo-yang Tower is situated in Yo-chou, Hunan province.
The poem was probably written while on his way to Yeh-lang, the place of his banishment. (See Nos. 121 and 122)
[OMITTED]
53. AWAKENING FROM SLEEP ON
A SPRING DAY
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended—
What troubled my soul?—I remember not.
[OMITTED]
54. THREE WITH THE MOON AND HIS
SHADOW
I drink alone, and where are my friends?
Ah, the moon above looks down on me;
I call and lift my cup to his brightness.
And see, there goes my shadow before me.
Hoo! We're a party of three, I say,—
Though the poor moon can't drink,
And my shadow but dances around me,
We're all friends to-night,
The drinker, the moon and the shadow.
Let our revelry be meet for the spring time!
I dance, my shadow goes tumbling about.
While we're awake, let us join in carousal;
Only sweet drunkeness shall ever part us.
Let us pledge a friendship no mortals know,
And often hail each other at evening
Far across the vast and vaporous space!
[OMITTED]
55. AN EXHORTATION
Come flowing from the sky?
The swift stream pours into the sea and returns nevermore.
Do you not see high on yonder tower
A white-haired one sorrowing before his bright mirror?
In the morning those locks were like black silk,
In the evening they are all snow.
Let us, while we may, taste the old delights,
And leave not the gold cask of wine
To stand alone in the moonlight!
They will also find its use some day.
Be not loath, therefore, to spend
Even a thousand gold pieces! Your money will come back.
Kill the sheep, slay the ox, and carouse!
Truly you should drink three hundred cups in a round!
Dear Tan-chiu, too.
To you I offer wine, you must not refuse it.
Now I will sing a snatch of song. Lend ear and hearken!
Little I prize gongs and drums and sweet-meats,
I desire only the long ecstasy of wine,
And desire not to awaken.
Have been left alone in their solitude,
While merry drinkers have achieved enviable fame.
The king of Chen would feast in ancient days
At his Palace of Peace and Pleasure;
Ten thousand measures of wine there were,
And reckless revelry forever.
Why say we have not the price?
My horse spotted with five flowers,
My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold,
These I will take out, and call my boy
To barter them for sweet wine.
And with you twain, let me forget
The sorrow of ten thousand ages!
[OMITTED]
56. THE INTRUDER
While in Chin the leafy mulberry branches hang low.
Even now while my longing heart is breaking,
Are you thinking, my dear, of coming back to me?
Why do you enter through the silken curtains of my bower?
[OMITTED]
57. THE CROWS AT NIGHTFALL
The crows seek their nests by the city wall.
The crows are flying home, cawing—
Cawing to one another in the tree-tops.
Lo, the maid of Chin-chuan at her loom
Weaving brocade,—for whom, I wonder?
She murmurs softly to herself
Behind the blue mist of gauze curtain.
She stops her shuttle, and broods sadly,
Remembering him who is far away—
She must lie alone in her bower at night,
And her tears fall like rain.
The theme of this poem is a well-known story of a young wife, who was left alone in Chang-an by her husband while he lived in another city with his mistress. The deserted wife composed poems of her love and fidelity, and weaving them into a piece of brocade, sent it to her husband, who was so moved thereby that he called her to his side and lived with her in happiness ever after.
Chin Chuan is an old name of Chang-an.
[OMITTED]
58. TO MENG HAO-JAN
Your love of beauty is something known
To everybody under heaven.
When young with red cheeks,
You cast aside your carriage and cap;
Now that your head is white,
You lie among the pine trees and the clouds.
You get drunk with the moon
As often as with the transparent wine;
And to the honor of serving the emperor
You prefer the rapture of blossoms.
Your nobility looms up like a high mountain,
Too high for others to attain to;
But they may breathe the rare fragrance
That your soul imparts.
Meng Hao-jan was a native of Hupeh and a poet of no mean reputation, ranking next to Li Po and Tu Fu in the entire galaxy of the poets of the glorious Tang period. He died in 740.
[OMITTED]
59. TO TUNG TSAO-CHIU
I remember the good old time.
You built me a wine house to the south of the Tien-chin Bridge
Songs were bought with yellow gold, and laughter with white jewels.
Months went by in one long lasting rapture; we scorned kings and princes.
Among them I was your special friend, you had my heart's devotion.
For you I would not have declined to uproot mountains and overturn the sea.
To you I bared my heart and soul without hesitation.
You remained in the north of Lo, with many sad dreams.
The separation was more than we could bear,
So we met again and went together.
Through the thirty-six turns of the river, winding round and round,
And amid the voices of the pine wind over the innumerable cliffs,
We burst into a valley—into the light of a thousand flowers.
Stood the governor of Han-tung and his men, who had come to meet us.
The Taoist initiates of Tzu-yang welcomed us, too, blowing on their jeweled bamboo pipes.
They took us on the Tower of Mist-Feasting,—what a music there stirred!
Such celestial notes! It seemed all the sacred birds of heaven sang together.
With those pipes playing, our long sleeves began to flap lightly.
At last the governor of Han-chung, drunken, rose and danced.
It was he, who covered me with his brocade robe;
And I, drunk too, chose his lap for pillow and went to sleep.
During the feast our spirits soared high over the ninth heaven,
But ere the morning we were scattered like stars and rain,
Scattered hither and thither, the Pass of Chu separating us wide,
As I sought my old nest in the mountains,
And you returned to your home across the Bridge of Wei.
Became the governor of Ping-chow then.
In May you called me and I crossed the mountain of Tai-hsing.
My cart wheels were broken on the steep passes, winding like sheep guts; but that did not matter.
What hospitality! What squandering of money!
Red jade cups and rare dainty food on tables inlaid with green jems!
You made me so rapturously drunk that I had no thought of returning.
To the Temple of Chin, where the stream was clear as emerald;
Where on a skiff afloat we played with water and made music on pipes and drums;
Where the tiny waves looked like dragon-scales—and how green were the reed in the shallows!
Pleasure-inspired, we took singing girls and gaily sailed the stream up and down.
How beautiful are their vermilioned faces, when half-drunken, they turn to the setting sun,
While the willow flakes are flying about them like snow,
And their green eyebrows are mirrored in the clear water one hundred feet deep!
The beautiful girls sing anew and dance in robes of thin silk.
But the sweet notes seem to linger in the air, hovering about the wandering clouds.
I went west and offered my Ode of the Long Willows,
But to my skyey ambition the imperial gates were closed.
I came back to the East Mountain, white-headed.
But once more we parted company north of Tsan-tai.
You ask me the measure of my sorrow—
Pray, watch the fast falling flowers at the going of spring!
I would speak, but speech could not utter all,
Nor is there an end to my heart's grief.
I call my boy and bid him kneel down and seal this letter,
And I send it to you a thousand miles, remembering.
This poem was written shortly after Li Po's departure from the capital, and tells of the companionship and excursions the poet had enjoyed with Tung Tsao-chiu before his going to the court. He is now a disappointed man, wandering over the country. See the Introduction.
Tung Tsao-chiu was a military official at Chiao district in northern Anhwei not very far from the city of Loyang.
Ping-chou, in central Shansi. The dynastic temple of Chin is located near the city of Taiyuan-fu. This locality was also called Pe-Liang.
The Ode of the Long Willows was composed by the celebrated scholar and philosopher, Yang-Hsiung (B.C. 53—A.D. 18) of the Han dynasty. Here Li Po refers metaphorically to his own verse. The passage tells of his failure at the court.
[OMITTED]
60. TAKING LEAVE OF A FRIEND
Round the city's eastern side flows the white water.
Here we part, friend, once forever.
You go ten thousand miles, drifting away
Like an unrooted water-grass.
Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer!
Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend!
We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
While our horses neigh softly, softly. . . .
[OMITTED]
61. MAID OF WU
Goblets of gold—
And a pretty maid of Wu—
She comes on pony-back: she is fifteen.
Blue-painted eyebrows—
Shoes of pink brocade—
Inarticulate speech—
But she sings bewitchingly well.
So feasting at the table
Inlaid with tortoise shell,
She gets drunk in my lap.
Ah, child, what caresses
Behind lily-broidered curtains!
[OMITTED]
62. THE LOTUS
Blooming fresh and fair in the morning sun.
Its glowing petals hide the clear autumn water,
And its thick leaves spread like blue smoke.
Alas! in vain its beauty excels the world.
Who knows? Who will speak of its rare perfume?
Lo, the frost will come, chilling the air,
And its crimson must wither, its fragrance fade.
Ill it has chosen the place to plant its root.
Would it could move to the margin of a flower pond!
An obvious metaphor, reminding one of that flower which "wastes its sweetness in the desert air." Such poems were popular and accorded a high regard by the Chinese scholars, who relish greatly the moral meanings that they themselves read into the simple folk songs in the Book of Odes compiled by Confucius. Li Po has left us a few scores of these allegorical poems, and it is these that Li Yang-ping in his Preface speaks of so highly. See Appendix II.
[OMITTED]
63. TO HIS TWO CHILDREN
And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep.
In East Luh where my family stay,
I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours.
I cannot be back in time for the spring doings,
Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river.
The south wind blowing wafts my homesick spirit
And carries it up to the front of our familiar tavern.
There I see a peach tree on the east side of the house
With thick leaves and branches waving in the blue mist.
It is the tree I planted before my parting three years ago.
The peach tree has grown now as tall as the tavern roof,
While I have wandered about without returning.
Ping-yang, my pretty daughter, I see you stand
By the peach tree and pluck a flowering branch.
You pluck the flowers, but I am not there—
How your tears flow like a stream of water!
My little son, Po-chin, grown up to your sister's shoulders,
You come out with her under the peach tree,
But who is there to pat you on the back?
When I think of these things, my senses fail,
And a sharp pain cuts my heart every day.
And send it to you with my love a long way up the river.
Written from Nanking during his southern travels prior to his journey to the court of Chang-an. His family lived in East Luh, a central part of Shantung.
[OMITTED]
64. TO A FRIEND GOING HOME
And the oxen pant under the moon, their gusty breath turning to mist.
The lowland air is humid and suffocating, and it is hard to bear.
There is no coach on the long road in the burning heat.
What do you think of going by way of the river?
You leave for Chin-ling, hoisting your sail high to the breeze.
Your parents are waiting and watching for you, leaning against the gate.
In Luh-chung there is the home of your childhood.
I have not returned for three years, and they are distracted.
Please, go and see them!—You know Po-chin, my boy.
He must be running his toy cart and riding on the back of a white sheep.
Written about the same time as No. 63.
The poet is near Chin-ling—that is, Nanking. In this southern region the oxen are so afraid of the scorching sun that they pant, it is said, even at the sight of the moon.
Luh-chung is a district, and Sand Hill a town, in Shantung. See No. 80.
[OMITTED]
65. A MOUNTAIN REVELRY
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was. . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.
[OMITTED]
66. THE OLD DUST
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?
[OMITTED]
67. A PAIR OF SWALLOWS
A pair of swallows are an envy for man.
Such a pair lived together once in a jeweled palace-tower.
Long they lived together by the gilded window with silken curtains.
The swallows entered the Palace of Wu and made their nest.
But once more fire burned the palace down.
Burned away the swallow nest and all the younglings.
Only did the mother bird escape death; she is worn with grief.
Poor lonely swallow, she longs for her mate that is dead.
Never again, can the two fly together.
And that pierces my little heart with sadness.
Another allegorical poem. A commentator says that this is a fable of Li Po's own life, he with his hopes and ambitions being compared with the mother swallow with her mate and younglings. The first palace, then, would allude to the court of Hsuan Tsung; and the second palace to that of the Prince of Yung.
[OMITTED]
68. AT A RIVER TOWN
Our wine is gone. So, farewell!
While you lie idle in your boat,
Your sail flies down homeward over the waves,
Past the islands burning red with flowers,
Past the slender willows, green on the river strand.
I'll go back, perhaps, to my old fishing rock on the beach.
[OMITTED]
69. I AM A PEACH TREE
Who is there I may turn to and smile?
You are the moon up in the far sky;
Passing, you looked down on me an hour; then went on forever.
Could not cut the stream of water in twain
So that it would cease to flow.
My thought is like the stream; and flows and follows you on forever.
These two stanzas are taken from a poem written by Li Po in behalf of his wife, expressing her sentiment toward himself.
[OMITTED]
70. THE SILK SPINNER
The water swells and the wind is high.
It is May. Through the Chu-tang gorge
Who dares to sail down to me now—
Down to Ching-chow, where the barley is ripe
And the silk worms have made their cocoons—
Where I sit and spin, with my thoughts of you
Endless as the silken strands?
The cuckoo calls high up in the air. Ah, me! . . .
The White King City is in Ssuchuan. The Chu-tang gorge, situated near Wushan in the same province, is one of the most dangerous spots in the Yangtze kiang. Further down the river and in Hupeh, Ching-chow is located, where the silk spinner awaits her lover.
[OMITTED]
71. CHUANG CHOU AND THE
BUTTERFLY
And the butterfly became Chuang Chou at waking.
Which was the real—the butterfly or the man?
Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?
The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea
Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream.
The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,
Was once the Prince of the East Hill.
So must rank and riches vanish.
You know it, still you toil and toil,—what for?
Chuang Chou. A famous philosopher of the 3rd and 4th centuries B.C., who was an ardent follower of Laotzu, the founder of Taoism. Chuang Chou's writing contains a chapter on his becoming a butterfly in a dream.
[OMITTED]
72. THE POET MOURNS HIS JAPANESE
FRIEND
To sail the waters where the fabled islands are!
Alas, the bright moon has sunk into the blue sea nevermore to return,
And gray clouds of sorrow fill the far skies of the south.
Chao is the Chinese name adopted by a Japanese, Abe Nakamaro, who, on arriving from Japan, was so fascinated with the brilliant court and city of Chang-an, that he chose to remain in China all his life. Once he sailed for home, but his ship encountered a storm and was blown to the south coast of China. At the first report of the mishap his friends at Chang-an believed that he was dead, and threnodies were composed, of which this poem by Li Po was one.
[OMITTED]
73. IN THE SPRING-TIME ON THE
SOUTH SIDE OF THE YANGTZE KIANG
The yellow bird sings and will not cease.
On the bank of the Kiang I am growing old, white-haired.
My homeward way lies lost beyond the horizon.
Though my thoughts fly into the clouds of Chin,
I remain with my shadow under the moon of Chu.
My life is a wasted thing,
My garden and fields have long been buried under weeds.
What am I to do so late in my years
But sing away and let alone the imperial gate of gold?
[OMITTED]
74. THE STEEP ROAD TO SHUH
The road to Shuh is more difficult to climb than to climb the steep blue heaven.
In the remotest time of Tsang-tsung and Yu-fu—
Yea, forty milleniums ago—that land was founded.
Yet from the wall of the Middle Kingdom runs no highway thither, no highway linking human dwellings;
Only a lone precipitous path—the bird-way—was built,
Leading westward toward the evening star,
And trailing across the forehead of the Yo-mei mountain.
And how those strong men died, traveling over!
The earth sunk and the mountains crumbled.
At last there is now a road of many ladders and bridges hooked together in the air.
Lo, the road-mark high above, where the six dragons circle the sun!
Lo, the stream far below, winding forth and winding back, breaks into foam!
The yellow crane could not fly over these mountaintops;
And the monkeys wail, unable to leap over these gorges.
How the Green Mud path turns round and round!—
There are nine turns to each hundred steps.
The traveler must climb into the very realm of stars, and gasp for breath;
I fear for you. You cannot clamber over these jutting rocks.
You shall see nothing by day but the birds plaining bitterly on the aged trees, the female following the male in their flight;
You shall hear no voice but the cuckoos calling in the moonlight by night, calling mournfully in the desolate mountains.
The road to Shuh is more difficult to climb than to climb the steep blue heaven.
A mere story of it makes the youth's red face grow pale.
The lofty peaks shoot up cloudward in rows. If one foot higher, they would touch the heaven.
The dead pine trees cling to the cliff, hanging headmost over the abyss.
Anon, a giant boulder tumbles from the crag-head; a thousand mountain walls resound like thunder.
The gate of the Sword Parapet stands firm on its frightful height.
One man defending it, a thousand men could not break it open.
And the keepers of the gate are not of your kin,
They may turn, I fear, to wolves and leopards.
Fleeing at eve before the huge serpents,
Men are killed and cut up like hemp,
While the beasts whet their fangs and lick the blood.
Though many pleasures there may be in the brocade city of Shuh,
It were better to return to your house quickly.
The road to Shuh is more difficult to climb than to climb the steep blue heaven.
I shrug my shoulders and heave a long sigh—gazing into the west.
This is one of the most admired and most difficult poems of Li Po, certain portions of it being as vague as they are beautiful. Some commentators maintain that this was written at the time of the An Lu-shan rebellion, when the emperor Hsuan Tsung fled to Ssuchuan, to which course Li Po was opposed; but being in no position to declare his opinion openly, the poet voiced it thus in verse covertly. The poem hints at the double danger for the emperor in leaving his capital to the rebels who are tigers and serpents as well as in trusting his person to the hands of the strangers of Shuh, who might turn to wolves and leopards, while it dwells for the most part on the difficulty of the journey in a remarkably vivid and forceful language. The Road to Shuh runs from Shensi to Ssuchuan over the mountains.
As to those "strong men" that died, there is this story: Some thousands of years ago, a prince in Shensi, knowing the fondness of the king of Shuh, offered him his five daughters for wives. The king of Shuh despatched five strong men to fetch the princesses. It was on their homeward journey that the party saw a big serpent crawling into a hole in the mountainside. One man tried to pull out the serpent by its tail, but could not do so. All the five men joined in the enterprise, and yelling aloud, they pulled the serpent, whereupon the whole mountain range crumbled and was split into five peaks. The five strong men and the five princesses and all the attendants perished.
[OMITTED]
75. PARTING AT A TAVERN OF
CHIN-LING
While the pretty girls of Wu bid us taste the new wine.
My good comrades of Chin-ling, hither you have come to see me off.
I, going, still tarry; and we drain our cups evermore.
Pray ask the river, which is the longer of the two—
Its east-flowing stream, or the thoughts of ours at parting!
[OMITTED]
76. THE PHOENIX BIRD TOWER
Now the birds are gone, and the tower empty; only the river flows aimlessly on.
Here where the garden of Wu palace bloomed, the deep grass hides the paths;
Where the kings of Chin vaunted their regalia, is only an old hill.
I see the three peaks hang aloft as though half-dropt from the sky,
And the river divide in two streams, holding the White Heron Island between.
But the floating clouds cover the sun,
And the city of Chang-an is lost in distance and gloom.
The Phoenix Bird Tower was situated to the north of Nanking, once the capital of Wu, Chin, and many other states. A legend has it that three birds of five-colored wings, resembling the peacock, nestled here once, and they sang so melodiously that all other birds of the vicinity were attracted to the tower. Those three birds were the Phoenix.
[OMITTED]
77. HIS DREAM OF THE SKY-LAND:
A FAREWELL POEM
It is lost in a wilderness of misty sea waves.
May be seen through cracks of the glimmering cloud.
It rises above the Five Mountains and towers over the Scarlet Castle,
While, as if staggering before it, the Tien-tai Peak
Of forty-eight thousand feet leans toward the southeast.
I flew across the Mirror Lake one night under the moon.
Followed me to the town of Yen-chi.
Here still stands the mansion of Prince Hsieh.
I saw the green waters curl and heard the monkeys' shrill cries.
I climbed, putting on the clogs of the prince,
Skyward on a ladder of clouds,
And half-way up from the sky-wall I saw the morning sun,
And heard the heaven's cock crowing in the mid-air.
Flowers choked the path; I leaned against a rock; I swooned.
I trembled in the deep forest, and shuddered at the overhanging crags, one heaped upon another.
Clouds on clouds gathered above, threatening rain;
The waters gushed below, breaking into mist.
The mountains crumbled.
The stone gate of the hollow heaven
Opened wide, revealing
A vasty realm of azure without bottom,
Sun and moon shining together on gold and silver palaces.
The ladies of the air descended like flower-flakes;
The faery lords trooping in, they were thick as hemp-stalks in the fields.
Bewilderment filled me, and terror seized on my heart.
I lifted myself in amazement, and alas!
I woke and found my bed and pillow—
Gone was the radiant world of gossamer.
All things pass with the east-flowing water.
Let the white roe feed at will among the green crags,
Let me ride and visit the lovely mountains!
How can I stoop obsequiously and serve the mighty ones!
It stifles my soul.
In this poem the poet describes his dream of visiting Mt. Tien-mu, "Fostermother of the skies," in Chehkiang. The other mountains, Chi-Cheng, the "Scarlet Castle," and Tien-tai, the "Terrace of Heaven" are located in the same province.
Prince Hsieh is the one poet-governor mentioned in 35.
[OMITTED]
78. IN MEMORIAM
(The poet mourns Ho Chi-chang)
Ho Chi-chang, frenzied with wind and stream.
The first time I met him at Chang-an,
He called me "a god in exile."
O dear lover of the cup,
He has turned the sod under the pine tree—
He who bartered his gold turtle for wine.
Now, alone, I shed tears, remembering him.
Ho Chi-chang. The jovial courtier who introduced Li Po to Hsuan Tsung. Ssu-ming, a district in Chehkiang, was his ancestral home, to which he retired and where he died. See the Introduction, also No. 125.
The gold turtle was probably a trinket of some sort, worn as an ornament.
[OMITTED]
79. ON THE ROAD OF AMBITION
(The poet departs from Nan-ling for the capital)
Of new-brewed wine and yellow chick fattened on grain.
I call the boy to boil the fowl and pour the white wine,
While my children, playing noisily about, tug me by the sleeve.
I sing and imbibe the bland ecstasy of the cup;
I rise and dance in the tangled beams of the setting sun.
Let me ride and spur my horse on the long, long road!
I take leave of my family and journey west to Chin.
Looking up at the sky, I laugh aloud and go.
Ha, am I one to crawl ever in the dust-laden weeds?
Chu Mai-chen. Died B.C. 116. A wood-cutter under the Han dynasty, whose wife left him because she could not endure poverty. By diligent study, however, he became governor of Kuei-chi in Chehkiang; and his wife, who had sunk to destitution, begged to be allowed to rejoin him. But he replied, "If you can pick up spilt water, you may return"; whereupon his wife went and hanged herself—Giles: Biographical Dictionary No. 65.
It is quite likely that the poet by the "silly woman of Kuei-chi" alludes to his own wife, who had left him because of his poor success in life.
[OMITTED]
80. TO TU FU FROM SAND HILL CITY
Solitude is my lot at Sand Hill City.
There are old trees by the city wall,
And busy voices of autumn, day and night.
The Luh wine will not soothe my soul,
Nor the touching songs of Chi move me;
But all my thoughts flow on to you
With the waters of the Min endlessly southward.
[OMITTED]
81. A VINDICATION
A Wine Star would not be in heaven;
If earth loved not the wine,
The Wine Spring would not be on the earth.
Since heaven and earth love the wine,
Need a tippling mortal be ashamed?
The transparent wine, I hear,
Has the soothing virtue of a sage,
While the turgid is rich, they say,
As the fertile mind of the wise.
Both the sage and the wise were drinkers,
Why seek for peers among gods and goblins?
Three cups open the grand door to bliss;
Take a jugful, the universe is yours.
Such is the rapture of the wine,
That the sober shall never inherit.
[OMITTED]
82. TO LUH, THE REGISTRAR
Outside the gate all the hills are barren.
A white cloud, my old friend,
Beckons me from far empyreal space.
Pray, when will Luh Chen-ho come back—
He who has flown west like a crane?
A native commentator remarks: "This poem would be better if the last two lines and the title were left out."
[OMITTED]
83. TO THE FISHERMAN
Nor flap your garment, if spiced with lan!
It is better to hide the chaste soul's radiance,
The world hates a thing too pure.
Await me, old man, I will go with you.
[OMITTED]
84. THE TEARS OF BANISHMENT
My friend returned to Wu from banishment.
I asked him about the sorrows of exile.
His tears fell like pearls of the South Sea.
[OMITTED]
85. THE LOTUS GATHERER
She talks to her companions and laughs among the lilies.
The clear sunlit water reflects her gay attire,
And her perfumed sleeves flap lightly in the wind.
By twos, by threes, they glint through the drooping willows;
Their horses neigh among the blown flowers, and are gone.
She sees and lingers with an anguish in her heart.
[OMITTED]
86. THE SPORT-FELLOWS
Mine was white.
Their colors differed,
Our hearts were one.
Rode the city street, side by side,
Flaunting our high head-gears gallantly,
Our long swords glancing in the sun.
Each had a fur coat on, worth a thousand guilders;
Both were guests of the five princes.
And suffer miserably as strong men must sometimes.
But when you, my comrade, are so distressed,
What avails me if I alone can flourish?
[OMITTED]
87. THE DANCING GIRL
Her pearly teeth revealing,
The northern maid, the prettiest child,
Sings "Downy grasses," instead of "Blue water."
Then, brushing her face with her long sleeve, she rises for your sake.
She dances like the wild fowl of Tartary, wind-blown toward the sky.
With sundown the flute sounds thicken, and the mellow voices of the singing girls.
[OMITTED]
88. THE ROVER OF CHAO
A scimitar on his side, gleaming bright like the snow,
The silver saddle glittering on his white horse,
Behold, he comes and is gone like a shooting star;
And goes he a thousand miles without stopping.
The deed done, he shakes his raiment and departs—
None knows whither, nor even his name.
Laying his drawn sword across his knee;
Picks up a piece of roast meat for Chu-hai to eat;
Offers a goblet of wine to Hou-ying to drink;
And weightier is his vow even than the Five Mountains.
When his ears are hot and his eyes burn,
His heroic soul blazes forth like a rainbow.
And the whole city of Han-tan shook with terror.
How the glory of two such strong men shines
For a thousand autumns over the ramparts of Tai-Liang!
Putting to shame the literati of the world,
And whiten their heads over books like the Tai-hsuan Ching.
Wu Chi was the name of Prince Hsin-ling of the Wei state in the 3rd century B.C.
Hou Ying was a recluse through whom Prince Hsin-ling obtained the service of Chu Hai, who was a rover of the type depicted in the present poem. When the state of Chao was attacked by a hostile state and its capital Han-tan was beleaguered, Hsin-ling and Chu Hai went to the rescue. Chu Hai—a very strong man—brained an irresolute general with a heavy hammer, while, by taking command of his army, Hsin-ling raised the siege of Han-tan.
Tai-liang was the capital of the State of Wei.
Tai-hsuan Ching. A learned book written by Yang Hsiung (B.C.53-A.D.18).
[OMITTED]
89. TO HIS FRIEND AT CHIANG-HSIA
While the Tartar horde watered their horses in the Tien-chin River,
You, governor of Chang-yeh, then, resided near Wine Spring;
I, banished nine thousand li, was in the land of Pa.
I, an Yeh-lang exile, stricken with the chilly frost,
How I longed for my friend in the west whom I could not see.
Only the east wind bore my dream back to Chang-an.
In joy and bewilderment I felt like one fallen from the cloud.
And amid the noise of pipes and flutes at the joyous feast
I endeavored in vain to utter long sentences.
To-day, sore-afflicted, I am dumb like the speechless trees.
Once I rode on horseback in the great imperial park;
Now I jog about slowly from house to house of mandarins.
Now with you I may hold sweet conversation.
Even as the leagues of cloud melt above the mountain,
Opening the view of the blue sky around, so melts my grief.
Sorrowing, I drink two thousand jugs of wine—
The cold ashes are warm again, and the spring is born.
And you, jolly wise host without compare,
Drunken, you go about, riding on the back of a mule.
But the mountains and waters—did they ever cater to man's desires?
Ah, no! Better blow your reed pipes, beat your drums, and wanton on the river water.
Call forth the young girls of the south and bid them sing the boat songs!
You may upset the Parrot Island, too, for my sake.
The heroic battle of the Red Walls was fought as in a dream—
Let me sing and dance and lighten the sorrow of separation!
[OMITTED]
90. THE CATARACT OF LUH SHAN—I
Southward I see the mighty waterfall.
It plunges three hundred chang down the mountain,
And froths for miles in the rapids below.
As wind-driven snow speed the waters,
Like a white rainbow spanning the dark.
I wonder if Heaven's River had fallen from above
To course through the mid-sky of clouds.
Long I lift my gaze—Oh, prodigious force!
How majestic the creation of gods!
Unwavering before the ocean winds that blow,
Glaring at the faint moon from over the river,
Profusely it sprays the sky
And drenches the green mountain walls.
The swift torrents boil over giant rocks;
The flying water scatters a mist of ethereal gems.
You fill my heart with deep repose.
No longer need I take the potion of precious stones,
You can wash away the earth stains from my face.
Let me be with the things I love,
And leave the world of man forever.
[OMITTED]
91. THE CATARACT OF LUH SHAN—II
And the purple vapor rises like smoke.
Lo, the long stream of water hung up yonder!
Straight down three thousand chi the flying torrent leaps,
As if the Silver River were falling from the ninth heaven.
[OMITTED]
92. BEREFT OF THEIR LOVE
Huang and Yin, the royal ladies of old,
Ranged the banks of Hsiao and Hsiang, south of Tung-ting.
They wandered by the fathomless waters of the deep.
All the world tells the tale of their misery.
Demons howl in the fog and infernal spirits whistle in the rain.
Ah, me! What would it avail me if I dared to speak?
High heaven shines not, I fear, on the loyalty of my heart.
Clouds gather clouds,—they would roar aloud in anger.
Even Yao and Shun ruling, the scepter would pass to Yui.
A king, deprived of his minister, is a dragon turned to a fish;
A minister usurps power, lo! a mouse is become a tiger.
The Nine Hills of Perplexity stand in a row, one resembling another—
How could they find the solitary mound of the Double-pupiled One?
They wept and moaned, and gazed into the distance.
Gazed longingly toward the deep mountains of Tsang-wu.
Their tears on the bamboo leaves will not fade forever.
Huang and Hu Yin (24th century B.C.) were two daughters of Emperor Yao, who gave them in marriage to his successor, Shun—the Double-pupiled One. Shun, while traveling south in the district of Tsang-wu (Hunan Province) died and was buried in the field. The two wives arrived too late to meet their husband, and their tear-marks produced a new species of bamboo with speckled leaves. Yui succeeded Shun as emperor.
The original of this poem, much prized for its verbal beauty and its classic allegory, is quite obscure. The native commentators have a great deal to say on the significance of the second stanza. At any rate, it is clear that Li Po, while retelling the well-known legend, alludes to his separation from the emperor and to the unhappy state of affairs at the court that was infested with unworthy and wicked men.
[OMITTED]
93. LADY WANG-CHAO—I
She mounts her palfrey and weeps,
Wetting her rose-red cheeks with tears.
To-day a high-born lady in the palace of Han,
To-morrow in a far land
She will be a barbarian slave.
Lady Wang-chao, a lady in the seraglio of the emperor Yuan-ti of the Han dynasty, was one of the early victims of the political marriages, which the ruling house of China was compelled to make from time to time with the chieftains of the barbarian tribes in order to avoid their savage incursions into the Middle Flower Kingdom.
This emperor had so many beauties, it is said, that for the sake of convenience he ordered their portraits to be painted. All the ladies bribed the artist, except Lady Wang-chao, who was consequently very unfavorably represented in the private gallery of the sovereign. So when a lady of the palace had to be presented to a Tartar chieftain, the emperor chose Wang-chao, believing her to be the easiest one to spare. He discovered his mistake too late. She died in the barbarian land; singularly enough, over her little mound in the desert the grass, they say, was always green.
[OMITTED]
94. LADY WANG-CHAO—II
And above the land of Chin,
Shedding a flood of silvery light,
Bids the radiant lady farewell.
She sets out on the road of the Jewel Gate—
The road she will not travel back.
The moon returns above the palace of Han,
Rising from the eastern seas,
But the radiant lady wed in the west,
She will return nevermore.
On the Mongolian mountains flowers are made
Of the long winter's snow.
The moth-eyebrowed one, broken-hearted,
Lies buried in the desert sand.
Living, she lacked the gold,
And her portrait was distorted;
Dying she leaves a green mound,
Which moves all the world to pity.
[OMITTED]
95. THE NORTH WIND
And his light illumines the frigid zone.
For neither the sun nor the moon shines there,
But only the north wind comes, blowing and howling from heaven.
The snow-flakes of the Yen mountains are big like pillows,
They are blown down, myriads together, over the Hsuan-yuan palace.
She will not sing, she will not smile; her moth-eyebrows are disheveled.
She stands by the gate and watches the wayfarers pass,
Remembering him who snatched his sword and went to save the borderland,
Him who suffered bitterly in the cold beyond the Great Wall,
Him who fell in the battle and will never come back.
There remains a pair of white-feathered arrows
Amid the cobwebs and dust gathered of long years—
Oh, empty tokens of love, too sad to look upon!
She takes them out and burns them to ashes.
But who can assuage the grief of her heart when it snows and the north wind blows?
[OMITTED]
96. THE BORDERLAND MOON
In the far cloud-sea of Tartary.
And blows over the Pass of the Jewel Gate.
While the barbarian foe pries the Bay of Chin-hai.
And many faces are sad with thoughts of home.
A man was seen returning—alas!
There is sighing and moaning without ceasing.
The Jewel Gate Pass, or Yu-men, in Anhsi, Kansu.
Po-tung. Perhaps, Ba-tung, on the old trade route to Tibet.
Ching-hai. Kokonor, a lake in Mongolia.
[OMITTED]
97. THE NEFARIOUS WAR
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home,
Our three armies are worn and grown old.
On his yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out,
There is no end to war!—
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
And the generals have accomplished nothing.
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.
[OMITTED]
98. BEFORE THE CASK OF WINE
Leaving faint ripples in the wine of the golden bowl.
The flowers fall, flake after flake, myriads together.
Your rosy face is rosier still.
How long may the peach and plum trees flower
By the green-painted house?
The fleeting light deceives man,
Brings soon the stumbling age.
In the westering sun,
While the urge of youthful years is yet unsubdued!
What avails to lament after one's hair has turned white like silken threads?
[OMITTED]
99. YUAN TAN-CHIU OF THE EAST
MOUNTAIN
You, the lover of the beauty of hills and valleys,
In the green spring you sleep in the empty woodland,
And hardly rise in the broad daylight.
The pine wind shakes your garment,
And the stony brook cleanses your soul.
How I envy you, who, unperturbed,
Are pillowed high in a mist of emerald!
[OMITTED]
100. LINES
Clear the autumn moon,
The blown leaves heap up and scatter again;
A raven, cold-stricken, starts from his roost.
Where are you, beloved?—When shall I see you once more?
Ah, how my heart aches to-night—this hour!
[OMITTED]
101. THE BALLADS OF THE FOUR
SEASONS
SPRING
Is plucking mulberry leaves by the blue water.
On the green boughs her white arms gleam,
And the bright sun shines upon her scarlet dress.
"My silk-worms," says she, "are hungry, I must go.
"Tarry not with your five horses, Prince, I pray!"
Lo-foh is the heroine of a popular ballad, which was already old at Li Po's time, and which served as the basis of the present poem. The original, much longer and charmingly naïve, runs as follows:
It shines on the house of Master Chin.
Master Chin, he has a comely daughter.
Lo-foh is her name.
She picks mulberry leaves south of the city.
Her basket has a cord of blue silk;
And a hook made of a laurel branch.
Bright moonstones hang from her ears.
Of yellow silk is her petticoat,
And of purple silk her jacket.
His five horses stop and stay.
The Lord Governor bids his men ask;
And they say: "Who art thou, little maid?"
"Lo-foh is my name."
"How old art thou, Lo-foh?"
"I am still less than twenty,
"But more than fifteen—yea, much more."
Says he, "Wilt thou ride with me, yea or nay?"
Lo-foh comes forward and replies:
"My Lord Governor," says she, "how foolish, indeed!
"My Lord Governor, you have your own lady,
"And Lo-foh, she has a man of her own."
[OMITTED]
102. THE BALLADS OF THE FOUR
SEASONS
SUMMER
Gaily the lotus lilies bloom.
She gathers them—Queen Hsi-shih, in Maytime!
A multitude jostles on the bank, watching.
Her boat turns back without waiting the moonrise,
And glides away to the house of the amorous Yueh king.
[OMITTED]
103. THE BALLADS OF THE FOUR
SEASONS
AUTUMN
From ten thousand houses comes the sound of cloth-pounding;
The sad autumn wind blows, and there is no end
To my thought of you beyond the Jewel Gate Pass.
When will the barbarian foe be vanquished,
And you, my beloved, return from the far battlefield?
Cloth-pounding is the ironing part in the old-fashioned Chinese laundering process. On account of the hardness of the wooden stand and mallet employed for it, the pounding produces a shrill metallic sound. Women working late, and their mallets clanging through the night, have long been a popular theme for poets.
In the present poem the situation is pathetic since from the ten thousand houses, where women are working late in the night, men have gone to the far battle front.
The Jewel Gate Pass, is located at the western extremity of Kansu province.
[OMITTED]
104. THE BALLADS OF THE FOUR
SEASONS
WINTER
All night she sews a soldier's jacket.
Her fingers, plying the needle, are numb with cold;
Scarce can she hold the icy scissors.
At last the work is done; she sends it a long, long way,
Oh, how many days before it reaches him in Lin-tao?
Lin-tao, a town on the frontier of Tu-fan, whose warlike tribes had harassed the Chinese empire for centuries past.
[OMITTED]
105. TWO LETTERS FROM CHANG-KAN—I
(A river-merchant's wife writes)
My hair scarcely covered my forehead, then.
You would come, riding on your bamboo horse,
And loiter about the bench with green plums for toys.
So we both dwelt in Chang-kan town,
We were two children, suspecting nothing.
And so bashful that I could never bare my face,
But hung my head, and turned to the dark wall;
You would call me a thousand times,
But I could not look back even once.
And beg you to love me till we were dust and ashes.
You always kept the faith of Wei-sheng,
Who waited under the bridge, unafraid of death,
I never knew I was to climb the Hill of Wang-fu
And watch for you these many days.
Traveling beyond the Keu-Tang Gorge,
Where the giant rocks heap up the swift river,
And the rapids are not passable in May.
Did you hear the monkeys wailing
Up on the skyey height of the crags?
And each and every one is filled up with green moss?
And already in the autumn wind the leaves are falling.
The yellow butterflies of October
Flutter in pairs over the grass of the west garden.
My heart aches at seeing them. . . .
I sit sorrowing alone, and alas!
The vermilion of my face is fading.
If you will write me a letter beforehand,
I will come to meet you—the way is not long—
I will come as far as the Long Wind Beach instantly.
Chang-kan is a suburb of Nanking.
The Long Wind Beach, or Chang-feng Sha, is in Anhwei, several hundred miles up the river, from Nanking. It is really a long way. But by making the wife say that the way is not long, Li Po brings out the girlishness of the speaker.
Wang-fu means "husband watching" and more than one hill has taken that name because of a similar tradition of a forlorn wife who climbed the height to watch for the return of her husband.
Wei Sheng. 6th century B.C. He was a young man of fidelity. He promised to meet a girl under a bridge in Chang-an, and waited for her there. Though the girl did not appear and the river water was rising, he would not leave his post and was drowned.
[OMITTED]
106. TWO LETTERS FROM CHANG-KAN—II
(Another river-merchant's wife writes)
Unaware of all things of the world.
Since married to you of Chang-kan town,
I wander the river bank to spy the weather.
In May the south wind blows,
I think of you sailing down to Pa-ling;
In August the west wind arises,
And I know you will part from Yangtzu.
You come and go, I sorrow ever,
Seeing you so little, and living so much apart.
When will you arrive at Hsiang-tan?
My dream goes over the wind-tossed waves.
Last night a storm went past in fury,
Tearing down trees on the riverside,
Spreading darkness without end—
Where were you, then, poor traveler?
Would I could ride the swift-drifting cloud,
And meet you in good time east of Orchid Beach!
And the purple kingfishers, embroidered on the gold screen!
Why at fifteen years and little more,
My face pink like the peach flower,
To grieve over winds and grieve again over waves!
[OMITTED]
107. ON ASCENDING THE SIN-PING
TOWER
Thinking of home, and with the anguish of the waning year.
The sun has set far beyond heaven's immensity;
The unsullied waters flow on in bleak undulation.
I see a stray cloud of Chin above the mountain trees,
And the wild geese of Tartary flying over the river dunes.
Alas! for ten thousand miles under the dark blue sky
As far as my eyes can reach, there is but one vast gloom for me.
[OMITTED]
108. ON GOING TO VISIT A TAOIST RECLUSE
ON MOUNT TAI-TIEN, BUT FAILING
TO MEET HIM
The peach flowers are deeper-tinted, wet with rain.
The wood is so thick that one espies a deer at times,
But cannot hear the noon bell in this lonely glen.
The wild bamboos sway in the blue mist,
And on the green mountainside flying cascades glisten
What way has he gone? There is none to tell;
Sadly I lean against a pine tree here and there.
Mount Tai-tien is where Li Po used to live, and is known also as the Tai-kuang Mountain. Tu Fu mention it in one of his poems addressed to Li Po. See No. 127.
"So to your old place of reading in Mount Kuang."
[OMITTED]
109. AT THE CELL OF AN ABSENT
MOUNTAIN PRIEST
The pine-tree gate is choked up with green moss;
There are bird-marks on the deserted steps,
But none to open the door of the priest's cell.
I peer through the window and see his white brush
Hung on the wall and covered with dust.
Disappointed, I sigh in vain;
I would go, but loiter wistfully about.
Sweet scented clouds are wafted along the mountainside,
And a rain of flowers falls from the sky.
Here I may taste the bliss of solitude
And listen to the plaint of blue monkeys.
Ah, what tranquility reigns over this ground!
What isolation from all things of the world!
[OMITTED]
110. ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT
An old pine of unremembered years.
The cold moonlight gleams on the tremulous water,
And pours into my room by the window door.
I prolong my futile singing to-night,
Deploring thee—how deeply, O prince!
For no more shalt thou see a true vassal like An-tao.
My song, ceasing, leaves the grief in my heart.
This is a poem composed probably after the rebellion of An Lu-shan and the flight of the emperor from the capital, the "prince" referring to the emperor.
[OMITTED]
111. A VISIT TO YUAN TAN-CHIU IN
THE MOUNTAINS
Led by pleasure, and of the distance unaware.
The blue range yonder lay too far to travel
When the giddy sun was ready to set.
Barely had I crossed three, four hills;
The road had taken a thousand and ten thousand turns.
And saw the clouds roll away one by one.
Now came the dainty moon over the tall pines,
How exquisite the autumnal scene of a hollow glen!
There was old snow left in the deep ravine,
And the frosty rapids flew, cutting through rock.
I could have climbed and gazed forever
When Tan-chiu, my friend, called me from afar.
He looked at me and burst into laughter.
And entered the solitude of a recluse.
Here we delighted ourselves night-long—
It was lucid day-break when I spoke of going.
[OMITTED]
112. A MIDNIGHT FAREWELL
We were drinking heavily together.
Frightened by our orgies, a white heron
Flaffed out of the river shallows. It was midnight.
[OMITTED]
113. THE SONG OF LUH SHAN
Singing the phoenix-bird song and laughing at the sage Confucius.
At dawn a green jade staff in my hand,
I leave the Yellow Crane House and go,
Seeking genii among the Five Mountains, forgetting the distance.
All my life I've loved to visit the mountains of renown.
Like a nine-fold screen adorned with embroidery of clouds;
And the clear lake reflects its gleaming emerald.
The two peaks shoot up high where the Gold Gate opens wide;
And over against the far waterfall of the Censer Mountain
The cascades of San-shi-liang hang like the Silver River of heaven.
The craggy ranges over-reach the azure blue;
And girdled in pink mist and green foliage,
They glisten in the morning sun.
The birds cannot fly over—to the remote skies of Wu.
I ascend the high place and look out on heaven and earth.
Lo! the waters of the great Kiang flow on and on never to return.
And through the nine provinces white billows roll on like mountains of snow.
Luh Shan is my joy and inspiration.
I gaze idly into the Stone Mirror to cleanse my soul,
Though the path Prince Shieh went is lost under deep green moss.
I've swallowed early the sacred pellet and forsaken all worldly desires.
Playing on the harp thrice over, I've attained the Way.
I see genii amid the iridescent clouds afar,
Going up to the celestial city with lotus in their hands.
I shall meet the Illimitable above the ninth heaven,
Then, with Lu-ao I hope to journey to the Great Void.
Luh Shan is a mountain near Kiu-kiang, Kiangsi.
When Confucius was visiting the land of Chu, a mad man named Tsu Yu passed him by, laughing and singing, "O phoenix bird, O phoenix bird!" etc. The sage attempted in vain to have an interview with him.
The last stanza refers to the poet's Taoistic attainment and visions.
[OMITTED]
114. TO HIS WIFE ON HIS DEPARTURE—I
To-morrow morn I take leave of you,
And cross the pass of Wu Kuan.
In vain you shall look for me in the white jade house,
But you must go and climb the Hill of Wang-fu longingly.
These three poems were written in 755 when he was setting out to join Li Ling, the prince of Yung.
As to the significance of the Hill of Wang-fu, see the note under No. 105. There was a hill by that name near Hsuan-cheng, Anhwei.
[OMITTED]
115. TO HIS WIFE ON HIS DEPARTURE—II
And ask me when I shall come back from the west.
I will return some day, wearing, perhaps, a seal of gold.
And you will not imitate the wife of Su Chin,
Who came not down from her loom.
Su Chin (died B.C. 317) was a native of Lo-yang. In his youthful years he went out, seeking for a career, but returned in rags and tatters. His wife would not take the trouble of leaving her place at the loom in order to greet him. However, he succeeded later in his scheme of the federation of six weaker states against the strong state of Chin, and he was appointed prime minister of each of the six states thus combined. A seal of gold was given to a state minister as the symbol of authority.
In this poem Li Po's political ambition is evident.
[OMITTED]
116. TO HIS WIFE ON HIS DEPARTURE—III
Sparkle the towers of the house where I shall be.
But the thought of you, my dear, who will stand alone
By the ancient gate and weep,
Will make me sit awake at night by the lonely lamp,
And watch the dying moon of dawn;
And all my tears shall flow as I journey on to the west.
[OMITTED]
117. ON HIS WHITE HAIR
Whence has come this hoar frost of autumn!
Ah, my long, long white hair of three thousand chang,
Grown so long with the cares of this world!
Chang is a Chinese unit of measure equal, perhaps, to ten feet. White hair 30,000 feet is certainly long. But this is not ludicrous to Chinese taste, for it is not a foolish extravagance but an innocent form of poetic indulgence.
In Chinese literature figures such as one thousand, three thousands, and ten thousands, simply denote a large number. So we read constantly of a party of ten thousand guests, a waterfall three thousand feet high, and a man emptying one thousand jugfuls of wine.
118. TO THE HONORABLE JUSTICE HSIN
In wild ecstasy of flowers and willow-green.
We drank our wine from the same bowls
With five princes and seven dukes.
Our hearts rose and grew blither,
Unflinching in the presence of a warrior lord;
Nor did we fall behind any one, when,
Delighting in wind and stream, we sought beauty.
We sped our horses to Chang-tai's pleasure mart,
And lightly carried our crops of gold;
Offered our essays in the court examination;
And sat feasting at a tortoise table;
And there was endless singing and dancing; . . .
We thought it would last forever, you and I—
How were we to know that the grass would tremble
And the wind and dust come, roaring down?
The Tartar horsemen came.
I am an exile now, traveling heavy-hearted,
Far away to the land of Yeh-lang.
The peach and plum trees by the palace
Are opening their petals toward the light—
Ah, when will the Gold Cock bring me pardon,
And I may return to you from banishment?
[OMITTED]
119. ON HEARING THE FLUTE IN THE
YELLOW CRANE HOUSE
I gazed toward home, beyond the horizon,
Toward the city of Chang-an.
I heard some one in the Yellow Crane House,
Playing on the sweet bamboo flute
The tune of the "Falling Plum Flowers" . . .
It was May in the waterside city.
[OMITTED]
120. ON HEARING THE FLUTE AT LO-CHENG
ONE SPRING NIGHT
Flying in the dark?
It flies with the spring wind,
Hovering over the city of Lo.
How memories of home come back to-night!
Hark! the plaintive tune of "Willow-breaking." . . .
[OMITTED]
121. ON THE TUNG-TING LAKE—I
While the lake fades into the cloudless sky of the south.
The sun gone down, the autumn twilight steals afar over Chang-sha.
I wonder where sleep the lost queens of Hsiang of old.
These are two of the five poems Li Po composed at a boat party with Chia-chi and Li Hua while on his way to Yeh-lang. See the Introduction.
The Chu River. The Yangtze takes this name in this vicinity near the Tung-ting Lake, which comprises the ancient land of Chu.
The lost queens of Hsiang, i. e. O Huang and Hu Yin, the wives of Shun, who perisheed near the lake by the Hsiang River. See No. 92.
[OMITTED]
122. ON THE TUNG-TING LAKE—II
The swelling tide could bear us on to the sky.
Come, let us take the moonlight for our guide,
We'll sail away and drink where the white clouds are!
[OMITTED]
123. TO HIS WIFE
In my moonlit house seldom a message arrives;
I watch the wild geese all go north in the spring.
And they come south—but not a letter from Yu-chang
This is evidently addressed to his last wife, who was staying at Yu-chang, in central Kiangsi, while Li Po was traveling westward to his place of banishment.
[OMITTED]
124. TO HIS FRIEND, WEI, THE GOOD GOVERNOR
OF CHIANG-HSIA WRITTEN IN COMMEMORATION
OF THE OLD FRIENDSHIP DURING
THE DAYS OF HIS BANISHMENT AFTER THE
TUMULT OF WAR.
The five palaces and twelve lofty towers,
Where gods of felicity stroked me on the forehead,
And I bound my hair and received the everlasting life.
Woe to me, I turned to the pleasures of the world,
Pondering deep on peace and war,
And the reigns of the ninety-six illustrious kings,
Whose empty fame hangs on the drifting vapor!
I could not forget the tumultuous battles;
Fain would I try the empire-builder's art
Of staking heaven and earth in one throw,
And win me the car and cap of the mandarin.
But time ordained a dire disappointment,
I threw my hopes and went, wandering wide.
I learned swordsmanship and laughed at myself.
I wielded my pen—what did I achieve after all?
A sword could not fight a thousand foemen;
The pen did steal fame from the four seas,
Yet it is a child's play not worth talking about,
Five times I sighed; and went out of the western metropolis.
At the time of my leaving
My hat-strings were wet with tears.
It was you, my friend, excellent and wise,
Who spread the mat and drew the curtains round
For a parting feast to comfort me journeying far.
You came to see me off, you and your company on horseback,
As far as the Inn of Cavaliers.
There amid songs and tinkling bells,
Ere our hearts were sated,
The garish sun fell beyond the Kun-ming Lake.[1]
In October I arrived in the land of Yu Chow,
And saw the legions of star-beaming spears.
The northland by the sea, abandoned by our dear emperor,
And trusted to one like the monstrous whale,
That drinks up a hundred rivers at one draught,
Was crumbling fast to utter ruin.
Knowing this, I could not speak out,
And vainly wished I had lived in the fabled isle without care.
I was like an archer who, cowed by the wolf,
Sets the arrow but dares not draw the bow-string.
At the Gold Pagoda I brushed my tears
And cried to heaven, lamenting King Chao.
There was none to prize the bones of a swift steed.
In vain the fleet Black Ears bounced lustily,
And futile it was, should another Yo-I appear.
I prodded on, a houseless exile—
All things went amiss;
I sped my horse and returned to your town.[2]
I met you and listened to your song and twanging strings,
Sitting ceremoniously in your flower-painted room.
Your prefecture alone possessed the peace of antiquity
And the balmy ease that lulled the mystical king Hsi to sleep.
Our banquet table laden with wine cups and jars,
And handsome files of men sitting with moth-eyebrowed girls,
Our feast went on in the light of blazing cressets.
Drunken, we danced amid the confusion of silken stools,
And round the rafters hovered our clear song—
So our revelry lasted till even after the dawn.
But you returned to Hsing-yang, your official days over.
What a multitude that gathered for the farewell rites,
And those tents erected on the roadside near and far!
Once parted, we were divided by a thousand miles,
With our fortunes differing like summer and winter.
And suddenly the empire was wrecked.
The imperial army met the barbarian foe,
The dust of the battlefield darkened sky and sea,
And the sun and moon were no longer bright
While the wind of death shook the grass and trees.
And the white bones were piled up in hills—
Ah, what had they done—the innocent people?
And the fate of the empire hung on General Ku Shu.
He with his thirty thousand long-spear men
Surrendered, and opened the gate to the savage horde.
They tamed the courtiers like dogs and sheep,
And butchered the men who were loyal and true.
Both the sovereign and the heir fled from the palace,
And the twin imperial cities were laid to waste.[3]
The imperial prince, given the supreme command,
But there was no discipline of Huan and Wen.
His generals herded bears and tigers in the ranks,
And men wavered in doubts and fears
While the rebellion raged like tempest.
You were defending Fang-ling, I remember,
With loyalty unsurpassed in all ages.
Eating the mist and washing my mouth in the crystal fountain.
The house door opened on the winding Nine Rivers,
And beneath my pillow lay the five lakes, one linked to another.
When the fleet came upstream in the midnight
And filled the city of Hsin-yang with flags and banners,
I, betrayed by my own empty name,
Was carried by force aboard the war-boat.
They gave me five hundred pieces of gold,
I brushed it away like a rack, and heeded not;
Spurned the gift and the proffered title—
For all that I was banished to the land of Yeh-lang.
The westward journey made me old.
Though the world was being put to order,
I was ignored like a stalk of frost-bitten grass.
The sun and the moon shine alike on all—
How could I complain of injustice to heaven?
You, good governor, adored like a god,
Took compassion on your old friend.
You invited me to be your guest of honor,
And we ascended three times the tower house of Yellow Crane.
How he would sit, looking complacently at the Parrot Isle.
No more heroes were born to the enchanted mountains of Fan.[4]
And the desolation of autumn covered the world.
But lo, the river swelling with the tides of Three Canyons,
And the thousands of junks that thronged these waters,
Jostling their white sails, gliding past to Yang-chow!
On looking out on these things, my grief melted away in my heart.
And over the green trees that grew like hair by the waterside,
Watching the sun with fear lest it be swallowed by the mountains,
And merry at moonrise, drinking still more wine.
How dainty their vermilioned faces!
They came up by the long flight of stairs; emerged,
From behind the bamboo screen, smiling;
And danced, silken-robed, in the wind of spring.
Though the guests knelt and asked for rest.
You showed me your poem of Ching-shan,
Rivaling the native beauty of the lotus,
That rises from the lucent water, unadorned.
You called for me ever at your residence,
Your mansion whose red gate was guarded by men,
Holding their spears in stately rows.
Amid quaintly cut stones and trimmed bamboos
A rivulet ran, brimming with limpid water.
We went up and sat in the waterside pavilion,
And poured forth our souls in heroic discourses.
A word between us is precious like white jade,
And a pledge of ours more than yellow gold.
I was not unworthy of you, I venture to say,
And swore by the Blue Bird on my fidelity.
Came, flying and crying, from heaven.
The mandate of my pardon arrived, I was told,
And I could return from banishment in Yeh-lang.
It was as if warmth enlivened the frozen vale,
Or fire and flame sprang from the dead ashes.
And the Tartar crew mock at the imperial command.
In the middle of the night I sigh four and five times,
Worrying ever over the great empire's affairs.
Still the war banners cover the sides of the two mountains,
Between which flows the Yellow River.
Our generals like frightened fowls dare not advance,
But linger on, watering their idle horses.
Ah, where shall we find a Hu-I, the archer,
Who with the first arrow will shoot down the evil star?[5]
This, the longest poem in the entire collection of Li
Po's works, is in a way his autobiography. It was
in 759. See the Introduction.
The first stanza tells of his early life of seclusion in
the world of Taoistic visions; of his ambition; and of his
disappointment at Chang-an, the western metropolis.
The Inn of Cavaliers and the Kun-ming Lake are
both situated in the vicinity of Chang-an. At the time
of Li Po's departure from the capital (circa 745) Wei
was evidently in Chang-an and was able to give him the
big farewell demonstration described herein.
Yu Chow, the northland, is in the present Chili province.
It was here that An Lu-shan was stationed with
his star-gleaming legions, and Li Po detected the Tartar
general's rebellious schemes, though he was obliged to
keep silent. It was this region which comprised the
state of Yen in the 4th century B. C. and where King
Chao ruled and built the Gold Pagoda.
King Chao once questioned his retainer, Kuo Wei, as
to the ways of attracting the great men of the time to
his court. Kuo Wei told his liege the following parable:
Once upon a time a certain king sent out his servant
on a mission to secure a swift horse that could run a
thousand li in a day. The servant returned with a bagful
of bones of a horse which was said to have made a
thousand li in a day. For these remains the servant had
paid 500 pieces of gold. The king was angry, for he
wanted a live horse. The servant replied, "When the
world learns that your Majesty has spent 500 pieces of
gold on a dead horse, the live ones will arrive without
your looking for them." Indeed, three horses—all of
them, one thousand li runners—arrived soon at the court.
"So my king," continued Kuo Wei, "if you really desire
begin with me who have but small talent!"
King Chao took the advice. He built the Gold Pagoda,
and there he waited upon Kuo Wei as his teacher.
Then many men of ability came from all parts of China
to King Chao, and with their aid he became the most
powerful of all kings.
The Black Ears was a famous swift horse.
Yo-I was one of those great men who came to King
Chao. Li Po laments that now there is no sovereign
seeking as earnestly as King Chao for men of talent.
And these, of whom he is one, have no opportunity.
Just in what prefecture Wei was stationed is not
known. When his official term was over, he returned
to Hsin-yang, a town on the west side of Chang-an.
Sometimes the two names are applied synonymously to
the capital.
The Chinese made a great deal of leave-taking, often
erecting as in this case tents on the wayside and offering
sacrifices to the god of the road for the safety of
the one setting out on his journey.
These passages refer, of course, to the rebellion of An
Lu-shan. General Ku Shu defended the Han-ku Pass,
which is an older name for Tun Kuan. By the twin
imperial cities the poet very probably means Hsing-yang
and Chang-an, unless he means the latter and city
of Lo-yang. See the Introduction.
The imperial prince i. e. Li Ling, the Prince of
Yung. See the Introduction.
Li Po was quite willing to join the staff of the prince
at the beginning; but when his rebellious intent became
obvious, the poet retired to the mountain of Luh, near
Kiu-kiang, or Hsin-yang, as it was called at the time.
mountain range.
Wei was now the governor of Chiang-hsia, a district
in southern Hupeh. The Yellow Crane House (See
note, No. 40) looks over the Yangtze-kiang.
Chieh is a notorious tyrant, and Yao a benign sovereign,
of ancient China. By the "dogs of Chieh" are
meant Shih Ssu-ming and his cohorts, who kept up the
rebellion started by An Lu-shan.
Hu I, a famous archer of the legend, who shot down
the false suns that appeared in the heavens and devastated
the crops. Here Li Po means a savior, who could
deliver the empire from the clutch of the rebels.
| The works of Li Po, the Chinese poet | |