# The Jade Mountain/Notes on the poems

NOTES ON THE POEMS
1. The Day of No Fire. (The Chinese title is Lines.) Chieh Chih-t'uêi, a scholar and statesman of the Chin State toward the end of the Chou Dynasty, was disliked by the Duke Wên and exiled to the mountains. Later, trying to find him, but failing, the Duke had the forest set on fire to force him out, and Chieh Chih-t'uêi was burned to death. The Duke, remorseful, ordered the people to mourn the dead man and always to commemorate him on this day, late in spring, by lighting no fires and eating only cold food. When the custom of the Day of No Fire had become fixed, fire of any sort was forbidden until night, and, as told in Han Hung's After the Day of No Fire, the Emperor would then send candles to his favourite officials, no others to be lighted before theirs.
1a. The ancient Emperor Wang, who had lost his kingdom, in what is now Sze-chuan, entered at his death into a cuckoo, and his imperial spirit has cried for ever: "Oh, to go back again!" The name "Emperor Wang," meaning "Emperor of Hope," came to be one of the names of the cuckoo. There is a direct allusion to this legend in Li Shang-yin's The Inlaid Harp.
2. In an old story by T'ao Ch'ien (A.D. 365-427), the Peach-Blossom River flows to the Utopian land, T'ao-yüan. It seems that long ago a fisherman from Wu-ling, fishing on the river, lost his ​way, and, leaving his boat and walking along the bank, found at its end a little cave. At first narrow and dark, the cave opened presently into a wide and beautiful place where there were many people in the streets, dressed in strange fashion. They asked the fisherman whence he came; but they knew nothing of his country and age; for their ancestors, so they told him, had fled from the disorders of the Ch'in Dynasty eight hundred years before and had never gone back again. They spoke an old tongue and read old books. They had no laws, they paid no taxes. Everyone worked his own land and was happy in his own home. Family after family welcomed the fisherman and invited him to remain among them; but he thought instead that he would come back later and so said good-bye to them. He passed through the cave, fixing the way well in his mind; he returned home and reported his experience. But when officials of the Government asked him to guide them to T'ao-yüan, he could never find it again. (See Wang Wêi's A Song of the Peach-Blossom River for a poetic version of the narrative; see also P'ai Ti's A Farewell to Ts'uêi.)
2a. T'ao Ch'ien, the poet who first set down the story, had been a magistrate at Pêng-tsê and, like Vice-Prefect Liu, to whom Ts'uêi Shu addresses A Climb on the Mountain Holiday, an appreciator of wine and chrysanthemums. Wang Wêi, in A Message from my Lodge, compares P'ai Ti to him by a reference to T'ao Ch'ien's home, Five Willows.
3. She Sings an Old Song. (The Chinese title is Ho-man-tzŭ, the name of the old Song.) According to Po Chü-yi, there was a singer of Ts'ang-chou in the K'ai-yuan period who, condemned ​to die, asked at the last moment to be allowed to sing this song, vainly hoping that it might win him clemency. His name became attached to the song. And it is known that later, in the Emperor Wên-tsung's time, Shên A-ch'iao, a palace-girl, was famous for singing it and dancing to it.
4. Lady Yang Kuêi-fêi, called in the original text of Chang Hu's poem On the Terrace of Assembled Angels T'ai-chên (The Ever-True), was the T'ang Emperor Hsüan-tsung's famous favourite. The Ladies Kuo Kuo and Ch'in Kuo were her beautiful sisters. The Premier, mentioned with them in Tu Fu's A Song of Fair Ladies, was Yang Kuo-chung, avowedly their brother, but supposed to be even more tenderly interested in them, and likely, therefore, to resent their receiving bluebird messages (love-letters) from other admirers.
4a. As told in Po Chü-yi's A Song of Unending Sorrow, Emperor Hsüan-tsung, known also as Ming Huang (Magnificent Monarch), was so enamoured of Lady Yang that he neglected his empire. His vassals revolted, and his armies refused to take orders. Forced to flee the capital, he escaped toward Sze-chuan with his lady and his officials, but even then his own body-guard protested that unless he gave her up, they would desert him. Finally they seized and slew her and officially announced that it had been by his own orders, whereupon the soldiers once more pledged loyalty to the dynasty. In Chêng T'ien's On Ma-wêi Slope it is told that they persuaded the Emperor to yield his lady by reminding him of the tragic fate of an earlier monarch, known as "The Later King of the Ch'ên Dynasty." This King also had become unpopular because of ​a favourite. He had refused to give her up, and when trouble followed, had tied her to himself and hidden in a dry well at Ching-yang Palace. The revolutionists had found them there and killed them. Further reference is made to this earlier Emperor, and to A Song of Courtyard Flowers, which he composed for his favourite, in Tu Mu's A Mooring on the Ch'in-huai River and Li Shang-yin's The Palace of the Suêi Emperor. Girls on the river at Nanking are still singing the song in flower-boats and taverns.
This Emperor was overthrown by the Suêi Emperor, Yang-ti, who became the most luxurious and depraved of the Chinese emperors and exhausted the country for his indulgences. In winter, for the trees of his garden, he had leaves and flowers made of silk, and birds were slaughtered broadcast that the palace cushions might be soft with only the finest down. (See Li Shang-yin's The Suêi Palace.) The end of the Suêi Dynasty came with his overthrow by the founder of the T'ang Dynasty, called "Peak of the Sun" (Jih-chüeh). Wang Wêi, in the last line of Looking Down in a Spring Rain contrasts a good emperor with Emperor Yang-ti.
4b. Among the incidents told of Emperor Hsüan-tsung is the famous occasion when Li Po was called upon by the Emperor to compose a poem for Lady Yang. It was at the Feast of Peonies, and the Emperor announced to the poet that he and his guests wished to hear, not the old poems, but a new one. Happily drunken, the poet thereupon wrote the three stanzas called A Song of Pure Happiness. They were sung at once, the Emperor himself playing the melody upon a jade lute. Another lyrical event is referred to in Po Chü-yi's A Song of Unending Sorrow. The ​Emperor Hsüan-tsung visited the moon in a dream and was taught there by Chang-o, the Goddess of the Moon, a dance-play called The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat. When he awoke, he remembered it, and, summoning his musicians and actors, the Pear-Garden Players, instructed them in the music and the steps. His beloved Lady Yang performed in the dance. (See note 42.)
4c. There is in this collection one poem by the Emperor himself, I Pass through Lu Dukedom with a Sigh and a Sacrifice for Confucius, in which, remembering the dream that brought Confucius an omen of death, the Emperor wonders if he should feel a similar premonition as to his own fate.
4d. Tu Fu, in A Song of Sobbing by the River, laments the passing of the Emperor and of Lady Yang. The end of Hsüan-tsung's reign came about in the following manner: An Lu-shan, son of a defeated Hun chieftain, had been captured in his youth, favoured by Hsüan-tsung, and adopted by Lady Yang; but, exiled later because of sedition, he aroused his people and led his bandit troops to the capture of the capital, Ch'ang-an. This was what caused the Emperor's unhappy flight, during which Lady Yang was killed. After An Lu-shan had reigned for a few months, he was murdered by his own adopted son, a Chinese; whereupon Ch'ang-an was recaptured by Chinese troops, and Su-tsung, son of Hsüan-tsung, was made Emperor. That this prince too had his troubles is told in Tu Fu's A Song of a Prince Deposed. Tu Fu, although loyal to the dynasty, tells in his poems A Song of Sobbing and Taking Leave of Friends how, during the troubles, he had fled the capital ​and was subsequently transferred in punishment to a provincial post.
Yüan Chên, in his poem The Summer Palace, speaks of courtladies, long after Hsüan-tsung's downfall, remembering the brilliant and prosperous thirty years of his reign, before the final ten years of infatuation with Lady Yang, which brought about his ruin.
5. It is believed that this Japanese priest may have been Kobodaishi, who spent twenty years in China at Ch'ang-an University. Chinese was the only language in which was written the whole Buddhist teaching, the light of which was the "single lantern." Kobo-daishi, returning home, founded the great monastery on Koya-san and devised from Chinese characters the Japanese alphabet, Kana.
"The source" meant China, the super-land in relation to Japan.
5a. The chant is specified in the original as Fan, chanting in Sanskrit; the faith, as in the seventh line of Liu Chang-ch'ing's While Visiting the Taoist Priest Ch'ang on the South Stream is the Ch'an doctrine. This Buddhistic doctrine of serenity brought by Ta-mo, or Buddhidharma, from India during the period of the Six Dynasties, and later blent with Taoism, was the Shingon Buddhism carried back by Kobo-daishi to Japan, where it persists today, blent with Zen Buddhism, its principal seat still being the Monastery of Koya-san.
6. The term "The Sun," or "The Light of Heaven," is often used to mean the Emperor, as well as "The Son of Heaven" and "The Ruler of Heaven."
​7. The Woman-Emperor Wu-chao (690—704) had established verse-writing as one of the requirements in the Government Examinations, through which, as through western Civil Service, posts of state were conferred. This applicant, having failed to qualify with his verse, feels himself unworthy of the hairpin of his family rank.
7a. Commentators explain that on the eve of his final examination the subject of the poem by Chu Ch'ing-yü, possibly the poet, hopefully addresses a friend who has received the degree and is an expert in the subject. Elaborated metaphor of this kind, rare in the best poetry of the T'ang period, became popular with later poets.
8. The phrase "Jade Dressing-Table" indicates a certain style of poem dealing with women.
The characters for this particular beetle and for good fortune have the same pronunciation, just as have the characters for bat and prosperity or the characters for deer and official Emolument.
The English term, "yoke," is used here as an inadequate equivalent of the original term, "washing-stone," which, though a familiar Chinese word for husband, would not be clear to a western reader.
9. In the Ch'u Kingdom of the Chou Dynasty there were many poets. One of them once wrote a poem and asked the others to "harmonize" it, which they did. Then he wrote another, to which the responses were fewer because it was more difficult. Then he followed with The Song of Bright Spring, which only two or three ​could harmonize. The title has come to mean a song of the highest order.
There are four ways of harmonizing a poem: to sing of the same subject with any rhymes; with the same rhyme-sound, but different words; with the same rhyme-words, but in a different order; or with the same rhyme-words and in the same order.
9a. Chia Chih had written a poem on the Palace of Light and asked his friends to "harmonize" it. (See the poems called An Early Audience at the Palace of Light by Ts'ên Ts'an and Wang Wêi.)
10. The sound of mallets on stone came from women washing goods to make winter clothes, according to the custom still followed in China.
11. "The Purple Hills" was a name for paradise.
12. "Dragon-beard" was a kind of finely woven bamboo matting.
13. Han Yü, for opposing Buddhism, was exiled by Emperor Hsien-tsung. The Emperor had sent envoys to India to import Buddhistic doctrines and was preparing a great ceremony to receive a relic, a bone of the Buddha, when Han Yü, protesting against the introduction of a religion unsuited to China, remarked that whatever virtue there had been in Buddha, there could be none in his bone; which, besides, might be really that of a dog or a sheep. The Emperor angrily exiled the protestant.
​On another occasion Han Yü, secretary to the Emperor's Premier, P'ai Tu, wrote an account of the conquering of the Huai-hsi rebels (see Li Shang-yin's The Han Monument). This writing was inscribed on stone as a monument of the victory; but afterward, owing to personal jealousy, the monument was cast down and an inferior inscription set in its place. (See Tu Fu's A Letter to Censor Han.)
13a. Divinity-cups are still used at temples for telling fortunes. Two small cups, originally of jade, now of wood, are thrown on the ground. The inquirer, kneeling before the altar, is told his lot according to their position and aspect.
14. There are five sacred peaks in China. Hêng-shan, the Nanyüeh, near Hêng-chou in Hu-nan Province (see Han-yü's Stopping at a Temple on Hêng Mountain), is the southernmost of them. Hua-shan, or Tai-hua (the Great Flower), the Hsi-yueh (see Hsü Hun's Inscribed in the Inn at T'ung Gate and Ts'uêi Hao's Passing through Hua-yin), is in Shen-si Province and is the westernmost. To westerners the best-known of these mountains is the easternmost, Tai-shan (the Great Peak), the Tung-yueh near T'ai-an in Shan-tung Province (see Tu Fu's A View of Tai-shan). The other two of the sacred peaks are Sung-shan, the Chungyueh, the midmost of them, near Lo-yang in Ho-nan Province; and a second Hêng-shan, the Pei-yueh, the northernmost, near Hun-yuan in Shan-si Province.
On these five mountains (see Han-yü's Stopping at a Temple), were conferred titles ranking with those of the Three Dukes, the highest in the Empire.
​14a. The Purple Canopy, Celestial Column, Stone Granary, and Fire God, are four mountain peaks around Hêng-shan, the Holy Mountain in Hu-nan Province.
15. Among the oldest known stone-carvings of the Chinese, these ten stone drums were made and engraved with poems, under the Emperor Hsüan of the Chou Dynasty. Three of them still exist and are now in the Confucian Temple at Peking, together with replicas of the other seven.
16. The writings of Wang Hsi-chih, even in his own time, were very valuable; but he would not sell them, except in exchange for a few white geese, of which he was extremely fond.
17. There is a popular anonymous parody of this poem, made by changing only two or three characters, mocking a husband who on a trip to the city had abandoned his moustache:
18. The last two lines are reminiscent of a poem by Sung Yü of the Chou Dynasty (300 B.C.) which concludes:
19. Tsou was a dukedom within the Lu Realm, in what is now Shan-tung.
​During the Han Dynasty the Lu Duke, breaking down the walls of his palace and finding ancient writings, recognized it as the former abode of Confucius and therefore transformed it into a temple.
19a. In the Analects Confucius said: "When the phœnix no longer comes, it will mean the end of my fortunes." When a dead ch'i-lin, akin to a unicorn, was brought to him by official hunters for identification, he recognized it as the creature which was wont to appear for greeting during a successful reign, but he grieved that this time its coming had meant its death. He wrote a poem to it:
A few days before he died, he told his disciples that he had foreseen his end in a dream, in which he had found himself at a large temple, witness of a sacrificial ceremony being conducted between two pillars, and he wrote this poem about it:
20. She weaves like the Lady Su Huêi, who embroidered the famous eight-hundred-charagter anagram, from which have been discovered already, as told in Dr. Kiang's Introduction, several hundred rhyming poems.
​21. Wu Valley in the Hsia-chung district, Sze-chuan Province, is the destination of one friend; and Hêng Mountain near Ch'angsha, in Hu-nan Province, is the destination of the other.
"Dew from Heaven," in the original text, refers to the Emperor's favour.
22. The Yen Song was a musical song of the northern border.
The Great Chief, Chan-yü, was the title of the King of the Tartars who invaded China.
Li Mu, of the Chao State in Chou Dynasty, had killed more than ten thousand Tartars, so that for a decade after there had been no more invaders.
23. Ts'ai Yen, called also Ts'ai Wên-chi, daughter of a famous scholar of the later Han Dynasty, was captured by Tartars and made the wife of their chieftain. She expressed her grief in a melody of eighteen stanzas on a barbarian musical instrument, hu-chia.
Musical notes in China still have the old names. The shang, the chüeh, and the yü are the second, third, and fifth of the total five.
24. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, for the purpose of introducing grape-vines into China, had tried to conquer central Asia.
25. The Chinese or Han Princess, Wang Ch'ao-chün, the Lady of Light, was a beautiful court-lady living at the palace of Emperor Ch'êng. Since there were too many girls there for the Emperor to select from except by portrait, Mao Yen-shou made all their
​likenesses, painting them favourably or unfavourably according to the size of their bribes. The Lady Wang, failing to bribe, was made to look unsightly. And, when a chieftain of the Huns sent envoys to the Emperor, offering to submit to the Han Dynasty if he might marry into the imperial family, the Emperor chose, among those whom he did not desire, Wang Ch'ao-chün and sent her word asking whether she would like to go. She agreed; preferring, say some, to be the wife of the Hun rather than obscure in the Han palace. At the farewell feast Emperor Ch'êng found her, unlike her portrait, very beautiful. But it was too late; he had given his word to the envoys. So she married the Hun chieftain. When she died, she was buried, as she had requested, alongside the Chinese boundary, close to the Great Wall. And where she lies, the grass, which everywhere else on the Hun side is yellow, is as green as it is on the Chinese side. Po Chü-yi has a poem on The Exiled Lady Wang Ch'ao-chün:
A play about her by Wang Shih-fu has been translated into English by Sir John Davis under the title The Sorrow of Han.
Lady Wang wrote the words and music of an eighteen-stanza song and used to play it on her guitar (p'i-p'a). When in Chinese paintings a woman is seen playing a guitar on horseback, it is she.
See Tu Fu's Thoughts of Old Time. In this volume it consists of only two of five poems he wrote under the one title, which is, more literally, Pondering on Old Ruins.
​26. Wu Mountain was the abode of nymphs and fairies. It is told that a supernally beautiful fairy appeared once in a dream to King Hsiang of Ch'u, and to his entreaties answered only that she was "morning-cloud and evening-rain upon the hills of Wu." "Cloud and rain" has come to be in Chinese a phrase indicating passionate love.
26a. Flying Swallow, Chao Fêi-yen, originally a singing-girl and a famous beauty, became a favourite of Emperor Ch'êng of the Han Dynasty, in the first century B.c. As remembered in Tu Mu's Confession, this lady was supposed to be so exquisitely slender that she could dance on the palm of the hand.
27. Mr. Ezra Pound in his Cathay, translating this and other poems by Li Po, misled readers for a period by using the Japanese name Rihoku. The reason for this would appear to be that Mr. Pound discovered the poems among the papers of Fenellosa and, finding the name as set down by some Japanese scholar, did not recognize the poet as the great Li Po. Other translators have used the name Li T'ai-po. Li was his family name, Po his given name, and T'ai-po his social name.
28. Yang-chou, called in Li Po's poem Kuang-ling, at the southern end of the Grand Canal, was in T'ang times a rich and luxurious city, of which it was said:
It was a gala resort for the wealthy and distinguished.
​28a. The Yellow Crane Terrace was a famous building on a terrace by the Yang-tsze at Wu-chang, Hu-pêi Province. (The Chinese word for it means literally a building of more than one story, a word for which we do not find an equivalent in English.)
Wang Tzŭ-ch'iao, attaining immortality six hundred years before Christ, is said to have flown up to heaven at this spot on the back of a yellow crane. The building commemorated the event. Li Po once came to it and wished to inscribe a poem, but finding Ts'uêi Hao's poem on the wall, wrote the following lines:
29. This poem is an example of what the Chinese call one-currentof-air poetry, yi-ch'i-ho-ch'êng.
30. General Hsieh Shang of the Chin Dynasty was Commander of the Guard in the region about Niu-chu. He was also a literary man and a poet. One moonlight evening he heard somebody reading poetry in a small boat. On inquiry, he found that it was Yüan Hung, a very young poet, reading from his own works. The general sent for him and praised him highly. Yüan Hung afterwards became well known. Near here, according to some of his friends, Li Po was drowned while trying to embrace a reflection of the moon; and it is possible that this was his last poem.
31. The poet had evidently been sent away from Ch'ang-an, the capital.
​32. Li po, as well as Wang Wêi, Mêng Hao-jan, Tsu Yung, and others of the T'ang poets, seems to have enjoyed the region around Chung-nan Mountain, fifteen miles south of the capital, Ch'angan, in Shen-si Province.
32a. The Emperor, upon reading Mêng's poem about Chung-nan, was indignant and declared that the famous poet had not been dismissed, but, as Li Po declares in A Message to Mêng Hao-jan, had left service of his own accord.
33. The post and the tower of silent watching refer to two stories. This is one of the stories. A young man once waited for a girl by a certain post under a bridge. She was delayed. Rather than leave the appointed spot, he clung to the post and was drowned by the rising tide. The girl, arriving late, and seeing the fate of her lover, killed herself. This is the other story. Two young people, deeply in love, were married. After much happiness, the husband felt impelled to become a recluse. Sadly, but resolutely, he went away to a mountain-side and established his retreat. His wife then built a high tower, in the top of which she lived for many long years, her gaze ever fixed towards the mountain and her hermit.
34. The "madman" was Chieh-yü, a Ch'u Kingdom recluse, famous for drinking, but more for stopping Confucius's chariot and warning him against politics with the song:
Wang Wêi, in the original of the next to the last line of A Message from my Lodge, refers to P'ai Ti as Chieh-yü.
The Stone Mirror: a peak near Lu Mountain.
34a. Hsieh Ling-yun: a famous scholar of the Chin Dynagy (see Li Po's T'ien-mu Mountain).
"The immortal pellet" was a drug made by Taoist alchemists and supposed to confer immortality. "The lute's third playing" refers to the fact that there were usually three stanzas in a song.
The Jade City: the capital of heaven.
Saint Lu-ao had been mentioned by Chuang-tzŭ as ascending into heaven.
35. This villa at Hsüan-chou, in what is now An-huêi Province, was named after Hsieh T'iao, a famous writer of the Chin Dynasty who was known as the Lesser Hsieh because he was the nephew of the still more famous writer of the same surname, Hsieh Lingyun, known as the Great Hsieh. Li Po, in high compliment, compares himself to Secretary Shu-yun as the Lesser Hsieh to the Great Hsieh. (See Li Po's Lu Mountain and T'ien Mu Mountain.)
"The bones of great writers" carries in the original a specific reference to Chien-an, a celebrated period of letters during the Wei Dynasty of the Three Kingdoms.
36. The road Li Po is describing runs from Shen-si Province (Ch'in) to Sze-chuan Province (Shu). In the original text the two ​early rulers are named: Tsan-tsung and Yü-fu, both of the legendary ages.
"The City of Silk": Chêng-tu, the capital of Sze-chuan Province.
37. She was in Ch'ang-an, the T'ang capital, and he near Yenjan, a boundary mountain. She has set down her harp from Chao (Chih-i Province) and significantly taken up her Sze-chuan lute, with its strings in attuned pairs.
38. The master, Tsên, refers to the poet, Ts'ên Ts'an, and the scholar, Tan Ch'iu, to a Taoist hermit of the early T'ang period, whose real name was unknown.
Prince Ch'ên was Ts'ao Chih of the Wêi Dynasty in the Three Kingdoms period.
The translation "flower-dappled horse" simplifies a comparison in the original to the five-flowered coin, a comparison which, though familiar and quick to the Chinese imagination, would for a Westerner impede the rush of the poem. (See Ts'ên Ts'an A Song of Running Horse River.)
39. The poet, according to Chinese custom means himself when in the original he names someone well known to whose lot or experience his own may be likened. Ssŭ-ma Hsiang-ju of the Han Dynasty, a famous scholar, was the guest of Prince Liang, but later retired and died in Mao-ling. The story is told that, invited to the house of a rich man, Cho Wang-sun, Hsiang-ju with a lute sang so beautifully his poem, The Phœnix in Search of his Mate, that Wên-chün, Cho Wang-sun's nineteen-year-old widowed daughter, fell in love with him. Rapt in wine, he sang with his ​lute another song, asking her to elope. She did. Having no money, they opened and conducted a small wine-house; and though the father, through family pride, bade them come home, the poet refused. The resort was so obscure that the Emperor Ch-êng, who liked his poetry, could not find him. But the Empress, unloved, discovered him and persuaded him with a bribe to write a poem with which she could regain imperial favour. This poem, which was read to the Emperor as hers, causing him to love her again, is a long one and still extant.
39a. Carp in the river and wildgeese or bluebirds in the sky were the classical messengers of love, or of friendship. In one of the Nineteen Ancient Poems, the poet tells how he was brought some carp by a boy and, cutting one of them open, found in its belly a letter from his beloved, declaring her love and wishing him happiness.
40. Only officials above the third rank in the T'ang Dynasty wore the decoration of the, Golden Tortoise.
41. It was believed that paradise, with its Jade Pool, lay to the west of China and that there stood also the palace of Hsi-wang-mu, the Royal Mother of the West. Stories are frequent, in Chinese and Japanese literature and art, of emperors trying to communicate with her kingdom. Emperor Mu of the Chou Dynasty had eight horses, able to cover ten thousand miles in a day. Driving them west, he reached the kingdom and found the goddess. But he never returned. And The Yellow Bamboo Song was composed as a mourning-song for him and his followers, all but a few of whom died on the way.
​42. In ancient stories, King Yi was cruel to his wife, Ch'ang-o. Planning to escape him, she stole from heaven a miraculous potion by means of which she might flee away and be safe. When she had drunk the potion, she began to run very fast and could not stop. Finally she entered the moon and was unable to find her way out. So she remained there and became its goddess, her husband becoming, in his turn, God of the Sun. (See notes 4b and 91.)
43. When only twenty-four years old, Chia Yi, a statesman and man of letters, sent a ten-thousand-word memorial, offering his political views and plans for reform, to Emperor Wên of the Han Dynasty. The period was prosperous and the Emperor, though not warm-hearted, was a just ruler. But Chia Yi was sensitive and had fears for the future. Everyone thought him crazy. Even the Emperor considered him a visionary whose dreams were of no value, and sent him as a petty official to Ch'ang-sha, now capital of Hu-nan Province, but at that time an out-of-the-way place, where he died. After thirty or forty years his prophecies came true and he was remembered. While at Ch'ang-sha, he acted as tutor to a prince, as mentioned in Liu Chang-ch'ing's New Year's. Near the Hsiang River, Chia Yi had written a poem eulogizing Chü Yuan, the famous poet, who in exile had drowned himself there. In the same locality Liu Chang-ch'ing, also in exile, wrote On Passing Chia Yi's House in Ch'ang-sha. The same poet's A Poem Sent to Governor Yuan intimates that Liu Chang-ch'ing in exile was as meritorious as Chia Yi.
44. It was a poetical belief that the cicada was the purest member of the insect world and lived only upon dew. Its advice to Li ​Shang-yin is rather to die nobly of hunger at home with his family than to lead an ignoble and uncertain official life.
45. The Precious Dagger was a long poem by Kuo Yian-chên sent to the T'ang Woman-Emperor, Wu-Chao. (See note 7.) The theme of the poem was that a good scholar is like a precious dagger. The poet was summoned to become her attendant. During the fifty years of her successful reign, akin in more ways than one to the reign of Queen Elizabeth in England, Tibet was conquered, and part of Turkestan.
45a. The Blue Houses are the quarters of the dancing-girls.
46. Chuang-tzŭ, dreaming once that he had been transformed into a butterfly, awoke to find the butterfly gone and his own body on the bed. He said: "I do not know which is my real self, this or the butterfly." Another story is told of him. Walking with his friend Huêi-tz, he saw some fish in the water and said: "How happy they are!" Huêi answered: "You are not a fish; how do you know they are happy? " And Chüang retorted: "You are not I. How do you know I do not know that they are happy?"
The tears of merfolk were supposed to become pearls. It was believed that in the fields of paradise grew only jewels and jade, which, under the sun's heat, would give off their colours in mist.
47. Nameless Lines are always love-poems, the designation having become a custom. We translate the title To One Unnamed.
48. In the original seventh line, Liu is named in the poet's place. Liu went once to a mountain, met a nymph there, and was enter​tained; but, coming away, lost his direction and never found it again; like the famous fisherman from Wu-ling, who lost his way to the Peach-Blossom Country.
It was supposed that a lock decorated with a golden toad was thereby made secure.
The jade tiger was a marker on a well-rope, gauging the water's depth.
Lady Chia, the daughter of a premier of the Chin Dynasty, and specified in the origin.al text, fell in love with her father's young secretary, Han Shou, and finally married him, in spite of his low rank. Her father, recognizing on Han Shou's clothes a particular scent used by his daughter, could not withhold his approval of the marriage.
Prince Wêi, also specified in the original, met on the Lo River a fairy, Lady Mi, who gave him a bridal mat and disappeared. He wrote about the episode, a long and beautiful account in rhythmic prose.
49. General Chu-kê Liang, called also K'ung-ming, is a familiar figure in these poems. He was a celebrated general, scholar and statesman in the period of the Three Kingdoms, who as Premier advised and served the founder of the Shu Kingdom, Emperor Liu Pêi, restored rebellious lands, and in later times was honoured and worshipped by the people. (See Tu Fu's A Song of an Old Cypress, The Temple of the Premier of Shu, and Thoughts of Old Time, II.)
49a. The Eight-Sided Fortress (pa-chên-t'u) was built on Chu-kê Liang's plan of the eight diagrams, beside the Upper Yang-tsze in Sze-chuan. He advised his Emperor, campaigning against the ​other two kingdoms, to master the Wêi Kingdom first; but the Emperor, rejecting his advice, attacked first the Wu Kingdom and was defeated. (See note 52a.)
49b. Emperor Liu Pêi, before his accession, went twice to Chu-kê Liang's hut for counsel and was refused; but the third time, when the Emperor knelt by the bed and said: "Not for my sake, but for the sake of my people, assist me," Chu-kê Liang consented. He remained Premier into the reign of the succeeding Emperor. Finally, as general, he planned a victory which his death prevented.
Historians regard Emperor Liu Pêi, founder of the Shu Kingdom, as carrying on the Han Dynasty against two usurpers in the other two of the Three Kingdoms, Shu, Wu, and Wêi, which in Liu Yu-hsi's poem The Temple of the First King of Shu are likened to a three-legged pot. The same poem refers to the fact that in the other kingdoms the five-pennyweight coin was given less than its proper weight. The "great premier" in this poem was the famous Chu-kê Liang.
49c. The Later Emperor of the Shu Kingdom, the second whom Chu-kê Liang served and advised, was defeated and captured after the Premier's death.
The Liang-fu Song (Song of the Holy Mountain) concerning one of the peaks of Tai-shan, had been written by Chu-kê Liang while he was still a hermit, and before he yielded to the Emperor's third request for assistance.
49d. In Tu Fu's Night in the Watch-Tower, Chukê Liang is referred to as " Sleeping Dragon," and Kung-sun Shu, another Han general, as "Plunging Horse."
​50. Kuan and Yüeh, specified in the original, were statesmen of the Chou Dynasty. Kuan and Chang, also specified, two great generals in the Shu Kingdom, were both killed in action; the first of them, Kuan Yü, has been made the Chinese god of war, called also Kuan Ti.
51. The Canons of Yao and Hsun were two volumes in the Confucian Book of History, Ch'ing-miao and Shêng-min two poems in the Confucian Book of Poetry, and the T'ang plate and Confucian tripod two art treasures.
The three Huang rulers and five Ti rulers were famous as good sovereigns of ancient China.
52. Chou Yü, a hero of the period of the Three Kingdoms, young, handsome, a statesman, a general, a scholar, a musician, was fond of listening to classical music and when a mistake would be made is said to have reminded the player with a glance. The listener here is of course not Chou Yü, but one whose eye the harpist likes to attract, and probably also a connoisseur of music.
52a. In Tu Mu's The Purple Cliff (a cliff on the Yang-tsze, east of Han-kou, Hu-pêi Province) allusion is made to a celebrated event occurring there, an exploit of Chou Yü's. A fleet from the Wêi Kingdom had come down the river to attack the Wu and Shu Kingdoms. The two generals, Chu-kê Liang of the Shu Kingdom, and Chou Yü of the Wu Kingdom, combined forces and destroyed the fleet by setting it afire. The King of Wêi, if he had won this battle, would have been able to bear captive to his Copper-Bird Palace the two famously beautiful girls of Ch'iao, ​one of them the wife of the King of Wu and the other the wife of General Chou Yü. These girls are celebrated in Chinese poetry, like Helen of Troy in European poetry, as a romantic source of war. In Tu Fu's poem The Eight-Sided Fortress, is sung Chu-kê Liang's grief that he had not conquered the Wu Kingdom; yet here are seen the Wu and Shu Kingdoms allied against the Wêi Kingdom. Changes in the military alignment of Chinese war-lords have always been rapid.
53. This temple, in Yang-chou, Kiang-su Province, was on a terrace erected by General Wu of the Ch'ên Dynasty and was named after him.
The river is the Yang-tsze.
54. In the original text of Liu Chang-ch'ing's On Leaving Kiukiang the familiar poetical term "Green-Wave Islands" is used for Ch'ang-an, the capital, from which he had been previously exiled because of a storm he had aroused by too freely expressing his own ideas.
In the original of Shên Ch'üanch'i's Beyond Seeing, the capital, is called "The City of the Red Phœnix"; and in Wang Wêr's To Chi-wu Ch'ien, "The Gate of Gold."
55. The fellow-official sent to Lien-chou was Liu Yü-hsi, the poet.
56. The clans of Wang and Shieh, specified in the original, had been prominent in Nan-king. They had lived on Blacktail Row, which, decaying. in the superseded capital, was now left to the swallows and the poor.
​57. In the period of the Three Kingdoms, the Yang-tsze River was fortified with chains to defend Nan-king, capital of the Wu Kingdom. But Wang Chün, of the Chin Dynasty, building high-storied war-ships, brought them down from Sze-chuan, managed to cut to pieces the iron chains at the mouth of the river, and so captured the city.
58. The original text of the second line reads: "Sings me what I am thinking under my southern cap." A prisoner from the south would wear all of the northern prison-garb, but keep his own cap to remember his own land. And the phrase "southern cap" has come to symbolize a political prisoner, with the implication that he maintains his ideas. This prisoner, for instance, cannot make his pure thoughts heard by the Emperor through the noise of the confused world.
59. Li Kuang of the Han Dynasty, an eminent general against the Tartars, shot one night at a black tiger and next morning found that the point of his arrow was stuck in a solid piece of rock. There is brief reference to him in Wang Wêi's Song of an Old General. In Wang Ch'ang-ling's Over the Border he is called "The Winged General." (See note 111.)
60. There was a myth that when the two sisters, O-huang and Nü-yin, wives of the dead Emperor Shun, had finished their period of mourning, they became Queens of the Clouds. Lake Tung-t'ing is the only place from which comes a certain spotted bamboo popular with both Chinese and Japanese for its decorative effect. The spots were made by the Queens' tears.
​61. Yang Hu of the Chin Dynasty, a governor stationed at Hsiang-yang, now in Hu-pêi Province, was famous as scholar, statesman and general and was much loved by the people. After his death a monument was erected on the Yen Mountain and inscribed with his deeds and was visited by so many mourners that it was called the Monument of Tears.
62. The bluebird, a messenger of the affections, summoned him to the house of his friend, whom he likens to the Han Dynasty Genie of the Red Pine. (See note 89.)
62a. Taoists were often alchemists, with crucibles and potions. Wêi Ying-wu in his Poem to a Taoist Hermit speaks of his friend "boiling white stones"—to be eaten thereafter like potatoes.
63. The original second line reads: "If I had enough for the Three Paths." The Three Paths indicated a hermit's hut, one to the front door, one to the back door, and one around the house.
In ancient alchemy it was believed that the flame of cinnamon-wood consumed gold.
64. In Mêng Hao-jan's poem the phrase used for the Mountain Holiday, a day on which everyone goes mountain-climbing for seeing the view, drinking wine, and writing poems, is the Feast of the Two Nines, the ninth day of the ninth month. In Wang Wêi's On the Mountain Holiday reference is made to the custom of each climber's carrying a spray of dogwood. Ts'uêi Shu also has a poem concerning this festival.
​65. The ancient hermitage is specified as that of P'ang, a hermit who lived on Lu-mên Mountain during the Han Dynasty; but the hermitage meant is probably Mêng's own.
66. The Great Dipper is compared to Kê-shu, the famous T'ang general who conquered Tibet, between which and China ran the Ling-t'ao River.
67. One of the palace luxuries was a pillow under which charcoal and incense were arranged, for fragrant warmth.
68. Wang Sun, a name akin to the English "Prince Charming," but more serious, and translated here "Prince of Friends," means a noble-hearted young scholar or, sometimes, lover. (See Wang Wêi's A Parting and An Autumn Evening in the Mountains.)
There was an old song:
69. The places mentioned in Po Chü-yi's note were widely separate: in Shan-si, Ho-nan, An-huêi, and Kiang-si Provinces.
70. Li Yen-nien of the Han Dynasty had said of an earlier beauty than Yang Kuêi-fêi:
72. Sêng, the poet's name, is a variant of Sanka, given as a family name to Buddhist priests.
73. Between Kiang-si and Kuang-tung, even the wildgeese find the Ta-yi (Great Granary) Mountains too high to cross.
Plum-blossoms have not yet opened farther north; but there are plenty in the warm south beyond this mountain.
74. The morning bell, tokening here the separation of friends, was a popular subject among poets as a symbol of finality. For instance, the Chinese spring, beginning on the first day of the First-month, corresponding to early February, ends on the thirtieth day of the Third-month, in our May; and its definite close is sung by Chia Tao in the latter two lines of a four-line poem called The Thirtieth Day of the Third-Month:
75. "The Way" (Tao) is the Way of the Universe, the Flow of Unison. It is the essence of Taoism.
At the age of thirty-one, when his wife died, Wang Wêi left his post as Assistant-Secretary of State and, as told in his poem My Retreat at Chung-nan, came to live by Mount Chung-nan, turning his heart to the teachings of Lao-tzŭ.
​75a. Lao-tzŭ, the founder and teacher of Taoism, despairing of mankind's acceptance of the Way, rode westward on a dun-coloured cow and disappeared for ever in the desert wilderness. At the wall, however, the guard of the gate, of whom nothing is known but his name, Yin-hsi, stopped the aged saint and kept him overnight at the border to set down his principles. The result was the famous mystical book Tao-tê-ching: Tao being the "Way" and Tê the exemplification of the mystical philosophy. (See Ts'uêi-shu's A Climb on the Mountain Holiday and Liu Chang-ch'ing's While Visiting a Taoist Priest.)
76. The Green Books: Chinese official history.
77. The references in the last two lines are to two youths of the Han Dynasty. The first, Pan Ch'ao, in his boyhood a copyist, threw his writing-brush to the ground one day and exclaimed: "I will join the army and fight the Huns!" He became later a famous and successful general. The other, Chung Chün, going to the border to fight the Huns, took off his student cap at the gate and demanded in exchange a lariat, with which he captured Hun chieftains.
78. Emperor Wên of the Han Dynasty, having trouble with the meaning of Lao-tzŭ's book, sent for the Old Magician of the River Bank, of whose wisdom he had heard. The wizard answered: "If the Emperor asked something else, I would go to him. But if he asks the meaning of Tao and Tê he should come to me." Whereupon the Emperor visited him and referred to the Confucian Book of Poems, in which it says that every being within ​the Empire is subject to the emperor. The old man raised himself to the middle of the sky and answered: "Above I do not touch heaven, nor in the centre man, nor below earth. To whom am I subject?" The Emperor bowed and asked him other questions; but the wizard, dropping him a volume, a commentary on the Tao-tê-ching, vanished. Later, to commemorate the event, the Emperor built on the spot this Terrace Whence One Sees the Magician (Wang-Hsien-T'ai).
79. Tu Ch'iu-niang was a singing-girl, the only woman poet in this anthology.
80. This famous performer, Li Kuêi-nien, was court-musician to Emperor Hsüan-tsung.
81. Ch'ü Yüan, author of The Songs of Ch'u, the first rhythmic prose in Chinese, had drowned himself in the Mi-lo River.
82. In the original text, Premier Fang Kuan is indirectly meant by a direct allusion to Premier Hsieh An of the Chin Dynasty, famously fond of chess. Fang is likened also to Lord Hsü, in reference to the following story. Prince Chi-cha of the Chou Dynasty had a very fine dagger, and he knew that Lord Hsü, through whose lands he was passing, coveted it and would not ask for it. The Prince was travelling and could not be without it. When he returned from his journey, Lord Hsü was dead; and Chi-cha, visiting the tomb, hung on a tree there the coveted dagger.
​83. Hearing that the bandits have been dispersed in Northern Chi (Chih-li Province), the poet sets out from Chien Station in Szechuan, and passing in that province the two mountains, Pa-hsia and Wu-hsia, he reaches Hsiang-yang, in Hu-pêi Province, on his way home to Lo-yang in Ho-nan Province. These names, in the original text, are used in effective succession.
84. For a literal translation of this poem, character by character, see Dr. Kiang's Introduction.
85. Yi and Lü were celebrated early statesmen; and in the following line of the original text, Hsiao and T's'ao were also specified: the greatest statesmen of the Han Dynasty.
86. Lao-tzŭ had said in the Tao-tê-ching: "The heavenly net is broad. It is loose, but never loses."
87. "The late Emperor" was Hsian-tsung, and the Kuos the family of the famous general Kuo Tzŭ-yi. (See notes 4 and 4a, b, c, d.) Tai-tsung was the grandfather of Hsüan-tsung.
One of the lines from this poem, "The high clear glance, the deep firm breath," is a phrase frequently quoted as applying to superior literature and brushmanship.
Secretary Wêi Fêng was himself a painter, as of course was Prince Chiang-tu; and Chih Tun was a famous horse-painter of the Chin Dynasty.
88. Lady Wêi was tutor of Wang Hsi-chih, who was a sage of the brush. (See note 16.)
​The emperor referred to was Hsüan-tsung.
The origin of the line in which we use the phrase "founders of this dynasty" contains the names of the Princes Pao and Ê, two great generals who helped found the T'ang Dynasty, and in the later line in which we use the phrase "even the finest are deprived of their spirit," the original text specified Hua and Liu, two celebrated horses.
Han Kan's horse-paintings are much admired to this day.
89. "Unicorn" is the best translation we can make of the sacred animal, ch'i-ling. (See note 19a.)
The southern rivers are specified in the original as the Hsiao and Hsiang, which are in Hu-nan Province.
Of the Wizard of the Red Pine we have said: "After his earlier follower he has now a new disciple." Tu Fu's text reads: "He has a new disciple, a very Chang Liang." Chang Liang was a great statesman, especially known as a wise adviser to the founder of the Han Dynasty. After Emperor Kao-tzu succeeded in unifying China, Chang Liang retired and followed his Taoist tutor, the Wizard of the Red Pine, and disappeared. Using a common convention in Chinese poetry, Tu Fu names Chang Liang, but 'means Censor Han, whose merit and case are comparable.
90. This was the temple of Chu-kê Liang. (See notes 49 and 49a, b, c, d.) The temple stood outside the city of Ch'êng-tu, the capital of Sze-chuan.
The poem intimates that in the reconstruction of a country strong statesmen are needed, but that it is difficult to enlist and direct their strength.
​91. "Grassy writing" is familiarly and improperly referred to as the running handwriting, the same Chinese character meaning grass and draught.
In Chinese mythology, Yi, the famous archer, shot down from the sky nine of the ten suns and became afterward king of the one sun left; his wife, Chang-o, becoming Queen of the Moon. (See Li Shang-yin's To the Moon Goddess, also notes 4b and 42.)
The Pear-Garden Players were the imperial troupe of actors at the court of Emperor Hsüan-tsung. (See note 4b.)
92. The deposed Prince may have been Su-tsung. (See note 4d.)
The crow, especially the white-headed, is a bird of ill omen.
The final line means that the spirits of the five emperors of the T'ang Dynasty are befriending the deposed Prince.
93. The term Spring Palace is still used in China to connote venery.
94. The Chao Tomb, specified in the original, was the tomb of Emperor T'ai-tsung, the second ruler of the T'ang Dynasty, and the most illustrious.
95. In the original, the river region is specified as Chiang-nan, the region along the lower Yang-tsze.
There is still a place in Yang-chou called Twenty-Four Bridges. It probably meant arches.
96. In the original, the two stars are named—the Cowherd and the Spinning-girl (Ch'ien-niu and Chih-nü): the reference being ​to a well-known story, the conclusion of which is that two sweethearts, having been changed into stars, are able to see each other across the Milky Way, but are allowed to meet only once a year, on the seventh night of the Seventh-month. Lafcadio Hearn has translated from the Japanese a long poem on this subject.
97. The man who owned this garden, Shih Ch'ung of the Chin Dynasty, was the richest man of his time. The last line of this poem alludes to one of many stories about him. A certain general coveted a favourite of his, a girl named Lu-chu, whom Shih Ch'ung refused to surrender. Presently the general, charging him with treason, sent troops to seize Lu-chu. She shut herself in her high chamber; and when they took Shih Ch'ung, she threw herself from the window to her death.
98. It was a poetical belief that the call of the wildgoose came never from pairs, but only from the solitary.
99. Tu Shên-yen was Tu Fu's grandfather.
100. The Court of Perpetual Faith meant the Ladies' Palace, and the Court of the Bright Sun the Emperor's Palace—where apparently some darker lady was in favour.
101. We have translated as "eastern song" the definite phrase of the original, "Yüeh song," meaning a song of Chekiang Province.
The orchid is known in China. as the Flower of the Scholar.
​102. The last line probably means that Chinese civilization had not crossed the boundary.
103. Wang Wêi is not only one of China's great poets, but one of her great painters. Su Tung-po of the Sung Dynasty said of him: "In his poems we find his paintings, in his paintings his poems."
104. This song is still popular as a song of farewell, and to this day the expression is often used, "Since we picked willow branches," meaning: "Since we parted."
105. In the original the girls who paid tribute were specified as the Han girls, and the quarrelling farmers as Pa people.
Wên-wêng was a Han Dynasty official, famous as being the first to civilize what is now Sze-chuan Province.
106. From the time of the Han Dynasty, palace guards wore red caps before dawn. The guard of the inner gate would announce dawn, and the others would echo his call till all the gates were opened.
The Jade Cloud Furs, the Pearl Crown, and the Dragon Robe were accoutrements of the Emperor.
During the Han Dynasty there stood in the palace courtyard great bronze giants, holding up their hollowed palms to catch the dew of heaven.
The last line refers to the promulgation of the imperial edict from a five-coloured silken scroll by a procession of officials, one of whom was Chia Chih.
​107. It is told by Chuang-tziŭ, that Yang-tzŭ, the scholar, before he became a student of Lao-tzŭ, was highly respected and honoured by his fellow men. Later, through the many years of his discipleship, he lost his prestige, and even a boor would take precedence over him; but he was glad, because he had got rid of pretensions.
There once was a hermit who was fond of sea-gulls; and they followed him wherever he went. His father, asking why they were not frightened, bade the son bring him some. But next day, when the hermit went out intending to take them to his father, they all flew away.
108. Oh, to go Back Again! is a song from the Confucian Book of Poems.
109. When the Yieh Kingdom (now Chê-kiang) was conquered by the Wu Kingdom (now Kiang-su), the Yüeh King still held his throne and plotted to throw off the tributary yoke. Aided by his able minister Fan Li, he planned to distract the King of Wu with women. Fan Li searched through the Yieh Kingdom for beautiful girls and came upon Hsi Shih washing clothes beside a lake. Controlling his own love for her, he fiercely persuaded her to his plan. She remained at court for some time; and the Wu King, in his infatuation, forgot affairs of state. Weakened by this means, the Wu Kingdom was eventually overcome by the Yüeh Kingdom. Fan Li afterwards refused all reward except Hsi Shih, whom he then took travelling through the Five Lakes, the famous sacred lakes corresponding to the Five Sacred Mountains. There is an allusion to this in Wên T'ing-yun's Near Li-chou Ferry.
​Hsi Shih suffered from heart-trouble; and men said that her drawn brows, her look of gentleness in suffering, which the girls of her time tried unsuccessfully to imitate, increased her beauty.
110. In the original text where we have used the phrase "the richest men of old," Chi-lun and Shih Ch'ung are specified, celebrated rich men of the Chin Dynasty; and toward the end, where we have used the phrase "hosts of the gayest mansions," the original specifies Chao and Li, well-known rich men of the Han Dynasty who maintained in their homes many dancing-girls.
111, The Horseman of Yieh was Ts'ao Chang, a son of the founder of the Wêi Dynasty in the period of the Three Kingdoms.
General Wêi Ch'ing and General Li Kuang were contemporary generals of the Han Dynasty. The first of them was successful but not able. The second was an able man who happened to fail and is named here to indicate the general about whom the poem is written. Lu Lun's Border Songs concern Li Kuang, also Wang Ch'ang-ling's Over the Border.
The original reference to the gushing water specifies "in Su-lê" and concerns Kên Kung, a general of the Han Dynasty who, surrounded by the Tartars in Su-lê City, was without water, but who prayed and was answered by the gushing of a spring which saved his men.
In the next line the original text names Ying-chüan, the native place of Kuan Fu, who is thereby indicated and who was a general of the Han Dynasty, a wine-drinking mischief-maker.
​In the original the last two lines refer definitely to " the Prefect of Yin-chung." This was Wêi Shang of the Han Dynasty. He was a venerable official at Yüng-chung near the Tartar border and was removed on account of his age. But when the Tartars began to advance, he was restored to his post by the Emperor and gave distinguished service.
112. Nan-king, called formerly and in the original of this poem Chin-ling, was the capital of the Six Dynasties (317-589).
113. In Giles's History of Chinese Literature the latter two lines of this poem are mistakenly ascribed to Tu Fu.
114. Sent by the Emperor Wu Ti of Han (140-87 B.C.) as envoy to the Huns, Su Wu was held captive by them near the Gobi Desert and lived there for nineteen years as a shepherd. When he returned, in 86 B.C., the first year of the reign of Chao Ti, he was rewarded with "two paltry millions and the chancellorship of the Tributary States . . . not a foot of soil . . . while some cringing courtier gets the marquisate of ten thousand families." Poems of great beauty and interest were interchanged between Su Wu and the renegade general Li Ling.
115. In the original text of the second line the poet, indicating himself, names Ch'ien-lou, a well-known but indigent scholar who finally starved to death; and in the later lines which we translate
the original text specifies Têng Yu, a man of good character and conduct, to whom Heaven was deaf and unjust, granting him no sons, and P'an Yüeh, a writer famous for his elegies to his wife.
The unknown Chinese editor entitled this volume "three hundred poems"; the number, as in the Confucian collection, being slightly inexact.