THE PERILS OF THE SHU ROAD
BY LI T'AI-PO
Alas! Alas! The danger! The steepness! O Affliction!
The Shu Road is as perilous and difficult as the way to the Green Heavens.
No greater undertaking than this has been since Ts'an Ts'ung and Yü Fu ruled the land.
For forty-eight thousand years no man had passed the boundary of Ch'in.
Westward, over the Great White Mountain, was a bird-track
By which one could cross to the peak of Omei.