No More Learning

No poet in the world can ever have enjoyed greater contemporary
popularity than Po. His poems were "on the mouths of kings, princes,
concubines, ladies, plough-boys, and grooms. " They were inscribed "on
the walls of village-schools, temples, and ships-cabins. " "A certain
Captain Kao Hsia-yu was courting a dancing-girl. 'You must not think I
am an ordinary dancing-girl,' she said to him, 'I can recite Master Po's
"Everlasting Wrong. "' And she put up her price. "

But this popularity was confined to the long, romantic poems and the
_Lu-shih_. "The world," writes Po to Yuan Ch? n, "values highest just
those of my poems which I most despise. Of contemporaries you alone have
understood my satires and reflective poems. A hundred, a thousand years
hence perhaps some one will come who will understand them as you have
done. "

The popularity of his lighter poems lasted till the Ming dynasty, when a
wave of pedantry swept over China. At that period his poetry was
considered vulgar, because it was not erudite; and prosaic, because it
was not rhetorical.

Although they valued form far above content, not even the Ming critics
can accuse him of slovenly writing. His versification is admitted by
them to be "correct.
"

Caring, indeed, more for matter than for manner, he used with facility
and precision the technical instruments which were at his disposal. Many
of the later anthologies omit his name altogether, but he has always had
isolated admirers. Yuan Mei imitates him constantly, and Chao I (died
1814) writes: "Those who accuse him of being vulgar and prosaic know
nothing of poetry. "

Even during his lifetime his reputation had reached Japan, and great
writers like Michizane were not ashamed to borrow from him. He is still
held in high repute there, is the subject of a N? Play and has even
become a kind of Shint? deity. It is significant that the only copy of
his works in the British Museum is a seventeenth-century Japanese
edition.

It is usual to close a biographical notice with an attempt to describe
the "character" of one's subject. But I hold myself absolved from such a
task; for the sixty poems which follow will enable the reader to perform
it for himself.




AN EARLY LEVEE

ADDRESSED TO CH'? N, THE HERMIT

At Ch'ang-an--a full foot of snow;
A levee at dawn--to bestow congratulations on the Emperor.
Just as I was nearing the Gate of the Silver Terrace,
After I had left the suburb of Hsin-ch'ang
On the high causeway my horse's foot slipped;
In the middle of the journey my lantern suddenly went out.
Ten leagues riding, always facing to the North;
The cold wind almost blew off my ears.
I waited for the bell outside the Five Gates;
I waited for the summons within the Triple Hall.
My hair and beard were frozen and covered with icicles;
My coat and robe--chilly like water.