Tai-yü had one day just finished combing her hair and performing her ablutions, when she espied Hsiang Ling come with smiles playing about her lips, to return her the book and to ask her to let her have T'u's poetical compositions in exchange.
"Of all these, how many stanzas can you recollect?" Tai-yü asked, smiling.
"I've read every one of those marked with a red circle," Hsiang Ling laughingly rejoined.
"Have you caught the ideas of any of them, yes or no?" Tai-yü inquired.
"Yes, I've caught some!" Hsiang Ling smiled. "But whether rightly or not
I don't know. Let me tell you."
"You must really," Tai-yü laughingly remarked, "minutely solicit people's opinions if you want to make any progress. But go on and let me hear you."
"From all I can see," Hsiang Ling smiled, "the beauty of poetry lies in certain ideas, which though not quite expressible in words are, nevertheless, found, on reflection, to be absolutely correct. Some may have the semblance of being totally devoid of sense, but, on second thought, they'll truly be seen to be full of sense and feeling."
"There's a good deal of right in what you say," Tai-yü observed. "But I wonder how you arrived at this conclusion?"
"I notice in that stanza on 'the borderland,' the antithetical couplet:
"In the vast desert reigns but upright mist.
In the long river setteth the round sun.