Page:A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919).djvu/33

 itself. We find his followers unsuccessfully attempting to use the same imagery and rhapsodical verbiage, not realizing that these were, as De Goncourt would say, the product of their master's propre névrosté.

"The Battle," his one thoroughly intelligible poem, has hitherto been only very imperfectly translated. A literal version will be found on page 39.

His nephew Sung Yü was no servile imitator. In addition to "elegies" in the style of the Li Sao, he was the author of many "Fu". or descriptive prose-poems, unrhymed but more or less metrical.

The Han Dynasty.—Most of the Han poems in this book were intended to be sung. Many of them are from the official song-book of the dynasty and are known as Yo Fu or Music Bureau poems, as distinct from shih which were recited. Ch'in Chia's poem and his wife's reply [pages 76 and 77] are both shih; but all the rest might, I think, be counted as songs.

The Han dynasty is rich in Fu [descriptions], but none of them could be adequately translated. They are written in an elaborate and florid style which recalls Apuleius or Lyly.

The Chin Dynasty.

[1] Popular Songs [Songs of Wu]. The popular songs referred to the Wu [Soochow] district and attributed to the fourth century may many of them have been current at a much earlier date. They are slight in content and deal with only one topic. They may, in fact, be called "Love-epigrams." They find a close parallel in the coplas of Spain, cf.: [ 27 ]