No More Learning

I envy you, who far from strife and talk
Are high-propped on a pillow of blue cloud.


XXX. 8. CLEARING UP AT DAWN

The fields are chill; the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragments of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatter away.

[Many of the above poems have been translated before, in some cases by
three or four different hands. But III. 4, III. 26, XV. 2, and XXIII. 9
are, so far as I know, translated for the first time. ]




DISCUSSION ON THE FOREGOING PAPER


THE CHAIRMAN (MR. GEORGE JAMIESON): Mr.
Li T'ai-po was, I am afraid,
a bit of a Bohemian (laughter), and his Bacchanalian experiences have
been repeated in later days even with the great poets. I am sure you
will all join with me in expressing a hearty vote of thanks to Mr.
Waley for his address and the very felicitous language in which he has
translated a number of these ancient poems. I trust his paper will
be printed and preserved with the rest of our publications, because
these poems, as far as I can judge--but hearing them read does not
impress one so much as reading them at leisure--are well worthy of
careful perusal. It is curious to note how unchangeable and immobile
China is. At the time these poems were written we in Great Britain
were living under King Alfred and trying to keep out the Danes and
other things. (Laughter. ) I can tell you that the Szechwan Road as
described in the poem that Mr. Waley has read is just the same now
as it was when the poem was written. And the social conditions of
the people are the same now as they were at that time. I have often
thought that Chinese poets are very limited in their range. They
seem to be deficient in the quality of imagination. China has never
produced a great epic poem. Of course I speak subject to correction,
but I believe I am right in saying that China has never produced a
poet comparable with Homer, Dante, Virgil, or Milton. There has been
no one born with the power of telling a story like Homer. The poets of
China appear to me to be emotional and descriptive, but incapable of
any high flights of imagination.