Page:A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919).djvu/37

 lived through the most tragic period of Chinese history. In 755 the Emperor's Turkic favourite, An Lu-shan, revolted against his master. A civil war followed, in which China lost thirty million men. The dynasty was permanently enfeebled and the Empire greatly curtailed by foreign incursions. So ended the "Golden Age" of Ming Huang. Tu Fu, stirred by the horror of massacres and conscriptions, wrote a series of poems in the old style, which Po Chü-i singles out for praise. One of them, "The Press-gang," is familiar in Giles's translations. Li Po, meanwhile, was writing complimentary poems on the Emperor's "Tour in the West"—a journey which was in reality a precipitate flight from his enemies.

Sung.—In regard to content the Sung poets show even less originality than their predecessors. Their whole energy was devoted towards inventing formal restrictions. The "tz'ǔ" developed, a species of song in lines of irregular length, written in strophes, each of which must conform to a strict pattern of tones and rhymes. The content of the "tz'ǔ" is generally wholly conventional. Very few have been translated; and it is obvious that they are unsuitable for translation, since their whole merit lies in metrical dexterity. Examples by the poetess Li I-an will be found in the second edition of Judith Gautier's "Livre de Jade." The poetry of Su Tung-p'o, the foremost writer of the period, is in its matter almost wholly a patchwork of earlier poems. It is for the musical qualities of his verse that he is valued by his countrymen. He hardly wrote a poem which does not contain a phrase [sometimes a whole line] borrowed from Po Chü-i, for whom in his critical writings he expresses boundless admiration. [ 31 ]