Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/679

] feeling. We have brought before the mind's eye the lowly cottage, where dwell a family united by the bonds of affection and of duty. Their food is the produce of the soil and the spoils of the chase. The highest ambition of the men is to excel as archers and charioteers, and their religious worship is the same as that which, untainted by Buddhism or any other form of philosophical teaching, is now practised at the imperial temples of heaven and earth, by the emperor only as high priest. Their wives are objects of affection and respect, and though in one song we find the belief expressed that &ldquo;a wise woman will ruin a city,&rdquo; yet there seems to have been abundance of regard for honest housewives who did their duty, who shared the toil of their husbands, and enjoyed with them the simple pleasures within their reach. It is true that now and again we meet with traces of scenes of revelry bordering on licentiousness; but their idyllic surroundings, and the absence of all violence, deprive the most dissolute descriptions of all vulgarity and coarseness. More serious by far are the wailing complaints of misrule and tyranny under which the subjects of certain princes groan. But even here there are no signs of insubordination or tumult; the remedy which suggests itself to a people patient and long-suffering to a degree is to emigrate beyond the reach of the tyrant, not to rise in rebellion against him. In the following lines, for instance, the writer begs his friends to fly with him from the oppression and misery prevailing in his native state, which he likens to the north wind and thickly falling snow:—

Foxes and crows were looked upon as creatures of evil omen, and so, giving play to his imagination, he tells us that the only variations noticeable in the monotony of the present distress were these prognostics of future evil, in these words:—

Though the style and diction of these songs are of the simplest description, yet through some of them there runs a rich vein of sentiment, and in forming a judgment on them it is necessary to remember that they are not studied poems, but simply what they profess to be, songs of the jeople. Like all political ballads also, many of them refer to contemporary events about which we know next to nothing. We are therefore much in the hands of the commentators, and they tell us that the following song is intended to depict a rural scene, in which an industrious wife impresses on her husband the necessity of early rising, and encourages him to make virtuous and respectable acquaintances:—

One other we will quote, taken from the songs of homage, or hymns which were sung either by or before the emperor when he sacrificed as high priest to God. We are told that this one was sung by King Seuen on the occasion of a great drought in the 8th century B.C. In it he expostulates with God for bringing this misery upon him, and expresses his belief that he had a right to expect succour instead of disaster from the Most High.

Such is the poetry of the Book of Odes, and such we should have expected to find it, since the earliest specimens of poetry in every land partake of a simple and religious nature, are crude in their measure, and are wanting in that harmony which is begotten of study and cultivation. The Chinese say of poetry that the Book of Odes may be likened to its roots, that during the Han and Wei dynasties it burst into foliage, and that during the Tang dynasty (620–907) it came into full bloom. Certainly the change that came over it after the time of Confucius is very marked. Instead of the peaceful odes of his day, we find pieces reflecting the unsettled condition of political and social affairs. Songs breathing fire and sword, mingled with wild fancies, the offspring of Taouist teaching, have taken the place of the domestic ballads of the Book of Odes. The simple monotheistic belief of the early Chinese is exchanged for a superstitious faith in a host of gods and goddesses, who haunt every hill, and dance in every glade. As a specimen of the poetry of this period, we may quote the following &ldquo;Lament of a Soldier on a Campaign,&rdquo; by Sun Tsze-king, of the Wei dynasty:—

