Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/65

 beneath the spreading pine. Even though he were to recall me to him, I could not fall to the level of the world.

" Now booms the thunder through the drizzling rain. The gibbons howl around me all the long night. The gale rushes fitfully through the whispering trees. And I am thinking of my Prince, but in vain ; for I cannot lay my grief."

Another leading poet of the day was SUNG Yu, of whom we know little beyond the fact that he was nephew of Ch'ii Yiaan, and like his uncle both a statesman and a poet. The following extract exhibits him in a mood not far removed from the lamentations of the Li Sao :

" Among birds the phoenix, among fishes the leviathan

holds the chief est place ; Cleaving the crimson clouds

the ph&nix soars apace, With only the blue sky above,

far into the realms of space; But the grandeur of heaven and earth is as naught to the hedge-sparrow race.

And the leviathan rises in one ocean

to go to rest in a second, While the depth of a puddle by a humble minnow

as the depth of the sea is reckoned.

And just as with birds and with fishes,

so too it is with manj Here soars a phcenix,

there swims a leviathan. . . Behold the philosopher, full of nervous thought^

with aflame that never grows dim, Dwelling complacently alone ;

say, what can the vulgar herd know of him 1 "

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