The following is one of his occasional poems:—
“A scholar lives on yonder hill,
His clothes are rarely whole to view,
Nine times a month he eats his fill,
Once in ten years his hat is new.
A wretched lot!—and yet the while
He ever wears a sunny smile.
Longing to know what like was he,
At dawn my steps a path unclosed
Where dark firs left the passage free
And on the eaves the white clouds dozed.
But he, as spying my intent,
Seized his guitar and swept the strings;
Up flew a crane towards heaven bent,
And now a startled pheasant springs....
Oh, let me rest with thee until
The winter winds again blow chill!”
Pao Chao was an official and a poet who perished, A.D. 466, in a rebellion. Some of his poetry has been preserved:—
“What do these halls of jasper mean,
and shining floor,
Where tapestries of satin screen
window and door?
A lady on a lonely seat,
embroidering
Fair flowers which seem to smell as sweet
as buds in spring.
Swallows flit past, a zephyr shakes
the plum-blooms down;
She draws the blind, a goblet takes
her thoughts to drown.
And now she sits in tears, or hums,
nursing her grief
That in her life joy rarely comes
to bring relief...
Oh, for the humble turtle’s flight,
my mate and I;
Not the lone crane far out of sight
beyond the sky!”
The original name of a striking character who, in A.D. 502, placed himself upon the throne as first Emperor of the Liang dynasty, was Hsiao Yen. He was a devout Buddhist, living upon priestly fare and taking only one meal a day; and on two occasions, in 527 and 529, he actually adopted the priestly garb. He also wrote a Buddhist ritual in ten books. Interpreting the Buddhist commandment “Thou shalt not kill” in its strictest sense, he caused the sacrificial victims to be made of dough. The following short poem is from his pen:—
“Trees grow, not alike,
by the mound and the moat;
Birds sing in the forest
with varying note;
Of the fish in the river
some dive and some float.
The mountains rise high
and the waters sink low,
But the why and the wherefore
we never can know.”
Another well-known poet who lived into the seventh century is Hsieh Tao-hêng. He offended Yang Ti, the second Emperor of the Sui dynasty, by writing better verses than his Majesty, and an excuse was found for putting him to death. One of the most admired couplets in the language is associated with his name though not actually by him, its author being unknown. To amuse a party of friends Hsieh Tao-hêng had written impromptu,
“A week in the spring to the exile appears
Like an absence from home of a couple of years.”