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 CHAPTER III POETRY

THE poetry of the Sungs has not attracted so much attention as that of the T'angs. This is chiefly due to the fact that although all the literary men of the Sung dynasty may roughly be said to have contributed their quota of verse, still there were few, if any, who could be ranked as professional poets, that is, as writers of verse and of nothing else, like Li Po, Tu Fu, and many others under the T'ang dynasty. Poetry now began to be, what it has remained in a marked degree until the pre- sent day, a department of polite education, irrespective of the particle of the divine gale. More regard was paid to form, and the license which had been accorded to earlier masters was sacrificed to conventionality. The Odes collected by Confucius are, as we have seen, rude ballads of love, and war, and tilth, borne by their very simplicity direct to the human heart. The poetry of the T'ang dynasty shows a masterly combination, in which art, unseen, is employed to enhance, not to fetter and degrade, thoughts drawn from a veritable communion with nature. With the fall of the T'ang dynasty the poetic art suffered a lapse from which it has never recovered ; and now, in modern times, although every student " can turn a verse " because he has been " duly

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