Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/245

 taught," the poems produced disclose a naked artifi- ciality which leaves the reader disappointed and cold.

The poet CH'EN T'UAN (d. A.D. 989) began life under favourable auspices. He was suckled by a mysterious lady in a green robe, who found him playing as a tiny child on the bank of a river. He became, in consequence of this supernatural nourishment, exceedingly clever and possessed of a prodigious memory, with a happy knack for verse. Yet he failed to get a degree, and gave him- self up "to the joys of hill and stream." While on the mountains some spiritual beings are said to have taught him the art of hibernating like an animal, so that he would go off to sleep for a hundred days at a time. He wrote a treatise on the elixir of life, and was generally inclined to Taoist notions. At death his body remained warm for seven days, and for a whole month a " glory " played around his tomb. He was summoned several times to Court, but to judge by the following poem, officialdom seems to have had few charms for him :

" For ten long years I plodded through

the vale of lust and strife, Then through my dreams there flashed a ray

of the old sweet peaceful life. . . . No scarlet-tasselled hat of state

can vie with soft repose ; Grand mansions do not taste the joys

that the poor man's cabin knows. I hate the threatening clash of arms

when fierce retainers throng^ I loathe the drunkard's revels and

the sound of fife and song But I love to seek a quiet nook, and

some old volume bring Where I can see the wild flowers bloom

and hear the birds in spring*

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