No More Learning

The "deflected" tones are distinctly more emphatic, and so have a faint
analogy to our stressed syllables. They are also, in an even more remote
way, analogous to the long vowels of Latin prosody. A line ending with a
"level" has consequently to some extent the effect of a "feminine
ending. " Certain causes, which I need not specify here, led to an
increasing importance of "tone" in the Chinese language from the fifth
century onwards. It was natural that this change should be reflected in
Chinese prosody. A certain Sh? n Yo (A. D. 441-513) first propounded the
laws of tone-succession in poetry. From that time till the eighth
century the _Lu-shih_ or "strictly regulated poem" gradually evolved.
But poets continued (and continue till to-day), side by side with their
_lu-shih_, to write in the old metre which disregards tone, calling such
poems _Ku shih_, "old poems. " Previous European statements about
Chinese prosody should be accepted with great caution. Writers have
attempted to define the _lu-shih_ with far too great precision.

The Chinese themselves are apt to forget that T'ang poets seldom obeyed
the laws designed in later school-books as essential to classical
poetry; or, if they notice that a verse by Li Po does not conform, they
stigmatize it as "irregular and not to be imitated. "

The reader will infer that the distinction between "old poems" and
irregular _lu-shih_ is often arbitrary.
This is certainly the case; I
have found the same poem classified differently in different native
books. But it is possible to enumerate certain characteristics which
distinguish the two kinds of verse. I will attempt to do so; but not
till I have discussed _rhyme_, the other main element in Chinese
prosody. It would be equally difficult to define accurately the
difference between the couplets of Pope and those of William Morris. But
it would not be impossible, by pointing out certain qualities of each,
to enable a reader to distinguish between the two styles.

_Rhyme. _--Most Chinese syllables ended with a vowel or nasal sound. The
Chinese rhyme was in reality a vowel assonance. Words in different
consonants rhymed so long as the vowel-sound was exactly the same. Thus
_ywet_, "moon," rhymed with _sek_, "beauty. " During the classical period
these consonant endings were gradually weakening, and to-day, except in
the south, they are wholly lost. It is possible that from very early
times final consonants were lightly pronounced.

The rhymes used in _lu-shih_ were standardized in the eighth century,
and some of them were no longer rhymes to the ear in the Mandarin
dialect. To be counted as a rhyme, two words must have exactly the same
vowel-sound. Some of the distinctions then made are no longer audible
to-day; the sub-divisions therefore seem arbitrary. Absolute homophony
is also counted as rhyme, as in French.