Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/235

 in his banishment to the island of Hainan, then a barbarous and almost unknown region. He was also a brilliant essayist and poet, and his writings are still the delight of the Chinese. The following is an account of a midnight picnic to a spot on the banks of a river at which a great battle had taken place nearly nine hundred years before, and where one of the opposing fleets was burnt to the water's edge, reddening a wall, probably the cliff alongside :

" In the year 1081, the seventh moon just on the wane, I went with a friend on a boat excursion to the Red Wall. A clear breeze was gently blowing, scarce enough to ruffle the river, as I filled my friend's cup and bade him troll a lay to the bright moon, singing the song of the ' Modest Maid.'

" By and by up rose the moon over the eastern hills, wandering between the Wain and the Goat, shed- ding forth her silver beams, and linking the water with the sky. On a skiff we took our seats, and shot over the liquid plain, lightly as though travelling through space, riding on the wind without knowing whither we were bound. We seemed to be moving in another sphere, sailing through air like the gods. So I poured out a bumper for joy, and, beating time on the skiff's side, sang the following verse :

'With laughing oars, our joyous prow

Shoots swiftly through the glittering wave My heart within grows sadly grave Great heroes dead, where are ye now ?'

" My friend accompanied these words upon his fla- geolet, delicately adjusting its notes to express the varied emotions of pity and regret, without the slightest break in the thread of sound which seemed to wind around

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