“When I wake and look out on the lawn,
I hear midst the flowers a bird sing;
I ask, ‘Is it evening or dawn?’
The mango-bird whistles, ‘’Tis spring.’
“Overpower’d with the beautiful sight,
Another full goblet I pour,
And would sing till the moon rises bright—
But soon I’m as drunk as before.”
(4.) “You ask what my soul does away in the sky,
I inwardly smile but I cannot reply;
Like the peach-blossoms carried away by the stream,
I soar to a world of which you cannot dream.”
One more extract may be given, chiefly to exhibit what is held by the Chinese to be of the very essence of real poetry,—suggestion. A poet should not dot his i’s. The Chinese reader likes to do that for himself, each according to his own fancy. Hence such a poem as the following, often quoted as a model in its own particular line:—
“A tortoise I see on a lotus-flower resting:
A bird ’mid the reeds and the rushes is nesting;
A light skiff propelled by some boatman’s fair daughter,
Whose song dies away o’er the fast-flowing water.”
TU FU
Another poet of the same epoch, of whom his countrymen are also justly proud, is Tu Fu (A.D. 712-770). He failed to distinguish himself at the public examinations, at which verse-making counts so much, but had nevertheless such a high opinion of his own poetry that he prescribed it as a cure for malarial fever. He finally obtained a post at Court, which he was forced to vacate in the rebellion of 755. As he himself wrote in political allegory—
“Full with the freshets of the spring the torrent rushes on;
The ferry-boat swings idly, for the ferry-man is gone.”
After further vain attempts to make an official career, he took to a wandering life, was nearly drowned by an inundation, and was compelled to live for ten days on roots. Being rescued, he succumbed next day to the effects of eating roast-beef and drinking white wine to excess after so long a fast. These are some of his poems:—