No More Learning

We have roamed on horseback under the flowering trees;
We have walked in the snow and warmed our hearts with wine.
We have met and parted at the Western Gate
And neither of us bothered to put on Cap or Belt.
We did not go up together for Examination;
We were not serving in the same Department of State.
The bond that joined us lay deeper than outward things;
The rivers of our souls spring from the same well!

Of Yuan's appearance at this time we may guess something from a picture
which still survives in copy; it shows him, a youthful and elegant
figure, visiting his cousin Ts'ui Ying-ying, who was a lady-in-waiting
at Court. [45] At this period of his life Po made friends with
difficulty, not being, as he tells us, "a master of such accomplishments
as caligraphy, painting, chess or gambling, which tend to bring men
together in pleasurable intercourse. " Two older men, T'ang Ch'u and T? ng
Fang, liked his poetry and showed him much kindness; another, the
politician K'ung T'an, won his admiration on public grounds. But all
three died soon after he got to know them. Later he made three friends
with whom he maintained a lifelong intimacy: the poet Liu Y? -hsi (called
M? ng-t? ), and the two officials Li Chien and Ts'ui Hsuan-liang. In 805
Yuan Ch? n was banished for provocative behaviour towards a high
official.
The T'ang History relates the episode as follows: "Yuan was
staying the night at the Fu-shui Inn; just as he was preparing to go to
sleep in the Main Hall, the court-official Li Shih-yuan also arrived.
Yuan Ch? n should have offered to withdraw from the Hall. He did not do
so and a scuffle ensued. Yuan, locked out of the building, took off his
shoes and stole round to the back, hoping to find another way in. Liu
followed with a whip and struck him across the face. "

[45] Yuan has told the story of this intrigue in an autobiographical
fragment, of which I hope to publish a translation. Upon this fragment
is founded the famous fourteenth-century drama, "The Western Pavilion. "

The separation was a heavy blow to Po Chu-i. In a poem called "Climbing
Alone to the Lo-yu Gardens" he says:

I look down on the Twelve City Streets:--
Red dust flanked by green trees!
Coaches and horsemen alone fill my eyes;
I do not see whom my heart longs to see.
K'ung T'an has died at Lo-yang;
Yuan Ch? n is banished to Ching-m? n.
Of all that walk on the North-South Road
There is not one that I care for more than the rest!

In 804 on the death of his father, and again in 811 on the death of his
mother, he spent periods of retirement on the Wei river near Ch'ang-an.