Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/188

 CHINESE LITERATURE

" Knowing, fair sir, my matrimonial thrall^ Two pearls thou sentest me, costly withal. And I, seeing that Love thy heart possessed, I wrapped them coldly in my silken vest.

"For mine is a household of high degree, My husband captain in the King's army; And one with wit like thine should say, 1 The troth of wives is for ever and ay}

" With thy two pearls I send thee back two tears : Tears that we did not meet in earlier years?

Many more poets of varying shades of excellence must here be set aside, their efforts often brightened by those quaint conceits which are so dear to the Chinese reader, but which approach so perilously near to bathos when they appear in foreign garb. A few specimens, torn from their setting, may perhaps have an interest of their own. Here is a lady complaining of the leaden- footed flight of time as marked by the water-clock :

" // seems that the clepsydra

has been filled up with the sea, To make the long, long night appear an endless night to me / "

The second line in the next example is peculiarly characteristic :

" Dusk comes, the east wind blows, and birds

pipe forth a mournful sound; Petals, like nymphs from balconies, come tumbling to the ground?

The next refers to candles burning in a room wnere two friends are having a last talk on the night before parting for a long period :

" The very wax sheds sympathetic tears, And gutters sadly down till dawn appears?

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