Take warning if you’d happy be,
To hate the darkness, love the light,
And don’t do nothing but what’s right;
And listen sometimes now and then,
To what is yelled at you by men;
And so enjoy your lives, instead
Of being, prematurely, dead.”
XXXII [307]
A CHINESE HUNTER (740 B.C.)
A strange and vivid glimpse by firelight into distant darkness is given by two Chinese songs, Odes i, vii, 3 and 4, in Legge’s Chinese Classics, IV, pp. 127 to 131. I have versified Mr Legge’s prose. The date was certainly more than 500, and probably 740 B.C., and the locality northern China, probably Honan. Shuh means “younger brother,” so that, except to those who believe the commentators, which I cannot, the hero, like the poet, is anonymous,—“The younger brother.”
Both translations may be sung to the same air, “Scots Wha Ha’e,” which was a traditional hunting tune in the south of Scotland.