No More Learning

Prosperity and disaster, rain and drought, plagues and pestilences--
By the village people were all regarded as the Sacred Dragon's
doing.
They all made offerings of sucking-pig and poured libations of wine;
The morning prayers and evening gifts depended on a "medium's"
advice

When the dragon comes, ah!
The wind stirs and sighs
Paper money thrown, ah!
Silk umbrellas waved.
When the dragon goes, ah!
The wind also--still.
Incense-fire dies, ah!
The cups and vessels are cold. [52]

[52] Parody of a famous Han dynasty hymn.

Meats lie stacked on the rocks of the Pool's shore;
Wine flows on the grass in front of the shrine.
I do not know, of all those offerings, how much the Dragon eats;
But the mice of the woods and the foxes of the hills are
continually drunk and sated.
Why are the foxes so lucky?
What have the sucking-pigs done,
That year by year _they_ should be killed, merely to glut the foxes?
That the foxes are robbing the Sacred Dragon and eating His
sucking-pig,
Beneath the nine-fold depths of His pool, does He know or not?


THE GRAIN TRIBUTE

Written _circa_ 812, showing one of the poet's periods of retirement.
When the officials come to receive his grain-tribute, he remembers that
he is only giving back what he had taken during his years of office.
Salaries were paid partly in kind.

There came an officer knocking by night at my door--
In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.
My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,
But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.
Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,
A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.
But still they cry that it is not paid in full:
With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.
Once, in error, I entered public life;
I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.
In succession I occupied four official posts;
For doing nothing,--ten years' salary!
Often have I heard that saying of ancient men
That "good and ill follow in an endless chain. "
And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest
To return to others the corn in my great barn.


THE PEOPLE OF TAO-CHOU

In the land of Tao-chou
Many of the people are dwarfs;
The tallest of them never grow to more than three feet.
They were sold in the market as dwarf slaves and yearly sent to
Court;
Described as "an offering of natural products from the land of
Tao-chou. "
A strange "offering of natural products"; I never heard of one yet
That parted men from those they loved, never to meet again!
Old men--weeping for their grandsons; mothers for their children!
One day--Yang Ch'? ng came to govern the land;
He refused to send up dwarf slaves in spite of incessant mandates.