Part 14

In green pavilions of warm trees The golden builders toil and sing; While swallows dip along the leas, And dabble in the ooze of Spring.

A thousand flowers, a thousand dreams, Bright pageants in confusion pass. See yonder, where the white horse gleams His fetlocks deep in pliant grass.

Beside the eastern lake there calls No laughing throng, no lover goes; But in the long embankment walls The willow shade invites repose.

The Ancient Wind

The peach blooms open on the eastern wall -- I breathe their fragrance, laughing in the glow Of golden noontide. Suddenly there comes The revelation of the ancient wind, Flooding my soul with glory; till I feel One with the brightness of the first far dawn, One with the many-coloured spring; and all The secrets of the scented hearts of flowers Are whispered through me; till I cry aloud. Alas! how grey and scentless is the bloom Of mortal life! This -- this alone I fear, That from yon twinkling mirror of delight The unreal flowers may fade; that with the breath Of the fiery flying Dragon they will fall Petal by petal, slowly, yet too soon, Into the world's green sepulchre. Alas! My little friends, my lovers, we must part, And, like some uncompanioned pine that stands, Last of the legions on the southern slopes, I too shall stand alone, and hungry winds Shall gnaw the lute-strings of my desolate heart.

Li Hua

Circa A.D. 850

An Old Battle-field

Vast, vast -- an endless wilderness of sand; A stream crawls through its tawny banks; the hills Encompass it; where in the dismal dusk Moan the last sighs of sunset. Shrubs are gone, Withered the grass; all chill as the white rime Of early morn. The birds go soaring past, The beasts avoid it; for the legend runs -- Told by the crook'd custodian of the place -- Of some old battle-field. "Here many a time," He quavered, "armies have been overwhelmed, And the faint voices of the unresting dead Often upon the darkness of the night Go wailing by." O sorrow! O ye Ch`ins! Ye Hans! ye dynasties for ever flown! Ye empires of the dust! for I have heard How, when the Ch`is and Weis embattled rose Along the frontier, when the Chings and Hans Gathered their multitudes, a myriad leagues Of utter weariness they trod. By day Grazing their jaded steeds, by night they ford The hostile stream. The endless earth below, The boundless sky above, they know no day Of their return. Their breasts are ever bared To the pitiless steel and all the wounds of war Unspeakable. Methinks I see them now, Dust-mantled in the bitter wind, a host Of Tartar warriors in ambuscade. Our leader scorns the foe. He would give battle Upon the threshold of the camp. The stream Besets a grim array where order reigns, Though many hearts may beat, where discipline Is all, and life of no account. The spear Now works its iron will, the startled sand Blinding the combatants together locked In the death-grip; while hill and vale and stream Glow with the flash and crash of arms. Then cold The shades of night o'erwhelm them; to the knee In snow, beards stiff with ice. The carrion bird Hath sought its nest. The war-horse in its strength Is broken. Clothes avail not. Hands are dead, Flesh to the frost succumbs. Nature herself Doth aid the Tartar with a deadly blast Following the wild onslaught. Wagons block The way. Our men, beset with flank attacks, Surrender with their officers. Their chief Is slain. The river to its topmost banks Swollen with death; the dykes of the Great Wall Brimming with blood. Nation and rank are lost In that vast-heaped corruption. Faintly now, And fainter beats the drum; for strength is shorn, And arrows spent, and bow-strings snapped, and swords Shattered. The legions fall on one another In the last surge of life and death. To yield Is to become a slave; to fight is but To mingle with the desert sands. . . . . . . . No sound Of bird now flutters from the hushed hillside; All, all is still, save for the wind that wails And whistles through the long night where the ghosts Hither and thither in the gloom go by, And spirits from the nether world arise Under the ominous clouds. The sunlight pales Athwart the trampled grass; the fading moon Still twinkles on the frost-flakes scattered round.

Ssu-K`ung T`u

A.D. 834-903

Little is known of his life, except that he was Secretary to the Board of Rites and retired from this position to lead the contemplative life. His introduction to the European world is entirely due to Professor Giles. No mention is made of him in the French collection of the T`ang poets by the Marquis de Saint-Denys. Yet the importance of his work cannot well be over-estimated. He is perhaps the most Chinese of the poets dealt with, and certainly one of the most philosophical. By his subtly simple method of treatment, lofty themes are clothed in the bright raiment of poetry. If through the red pine woods, or amid the torrent of peach-blossom rushing down the valley, some mortal beauty strays, she is but a symbol, a lure that leads us by way of the particular into the universal. Whatever senses we possess may be used as means of escape from the prison of personality into the boundless freedom of the spiritual world. And once the soul is set free, there is no need for painful aimless wanderings, no need for Mahomet to go to the Mountain, for resting in the centre of all things the universe will be our home and our share in the secrets of the World-Builder will be made known.

Freighted with eternal principles Athwart the night's void, Where cloud masses darken, And the wind blows ceaseless around, Beyond the range of conceptions Let us gain the Centre, And there hold fast without violence, Fed from an inexhaustible supply.*

-- * `Chinese Literature', p. 179. --

With such a philosophy there are infinite possibilities. The poet is an occultist in the truest sense of the word. For him, Time and Space no longer exist, and by "concentration" he is able to communicate with the beloved, and

Sweet words falter to and fro -- Though the great River rolls between.

Ssu-K`ung T`u, more than any poet, teaches how unreal are the apparent limitations of man. "He is the peer of heaven and earth"; "A co-worker in Divine transformation". With his keen vision the poet sees things in a glance and paints them in a single line, and in the poem as a whole you get the sense of beauty beyond beauty, as though the seer had looked into a world that underlay the world of form. And yet there is nothing strained, no peering through telescopes to find new worlds or magnify the old; the eyes need only be lifted for a moment, and the great power is not the power of sight, but sympathy.

And Nature, ever prodigal to her lovers, repays their favours in full measure. To this old artist-lover she grants no petty details, no chance revelations of this or that sweetness and quality but her whole pure self. Yet such a gift is illimitable; he may only win from secret to secret and die unsatisfied.

You grasp ten thousand, and secure one.

This might well be written over his tomb, if any verse were needed to encompass him. By entering into harmony with his environment, Ssu-K`ung T`u allowed his splendid vitality to find expression, and after the lapse of a thousand years these glowing pages torn from the book of life have drifted towards us like rose-leaves down a sombre stream.

Return of Spring

A lovely maiden, roaming The wild dark valley through, Culls from the shining waters Lilies and lotus blue. With leaves the peach-trees are laden, The wind sighs through the haze, And the willows wave their shadows Down the oriole-haunted ways. As, passion-tranced, I follow, I hear the old refrain Of Spring's eternal story, That was old and is young again.

The Colour of Life

Would that we might for ever stay The rainbow glories of the world, The blue of the unfathomed sea, The rare azalea late unfurled, The parrot of a greener spring, The willows and the terrace line, The stranger from the night-steeped hills, The roselit brimming cup of wine. Oh for a life that stretched afar, Where no dead dust of books were rife, Where spring sang clear from star to star; Alas! what hope for such a life?

Set Free

I revel in flowers without let, An atom at random in space; My soul dwells in regions ethereal, And the world is my dreaming-place.

As the tops of the ocean I tower, As the winds of the air spreading wide, I am 'stablished in might and dominion and power, With the universe ranged at my side.

Before me the sun, moon, and stars, Behind me the phoenix doth clang; In the morning I lash my leviathans, And I bathe my feet in Fusang.