Page:Gems of Chinese literature (1922).djvu/59

  HE Prince of Ch'u said to his prime minister, “What have you done that should cause the officers and people of this State to abuse you so clamorously?” “Abuse me indeed they do,” replied the minister; “but pardon my boldness, and I will explain. A stranger was singing in one of our villages the other day, and this was the subject of his lay:―There is the music of the masses; there is the music of a narrower circle; that of a narrower circle still; and lastly, the classical music of the cultured few. This classical music is too lofty, and too difficult of comprehension, for the masses. “Among birds there is the phœnix: among fishes, the leviathan. The phœnix soars aloft, cleaving the red clouds, with the blue firmament above it, away into the uttermost realms of space. But what can the poor hedge-quail know of the grandeur of heaven and earth? The leviathan rises in the morning in one ocean to go to rest at night in another. But what can the minnow of a puddle know of the depth of the sea? “And there are phœnixes and leviathans, not only among birds and fishes, but among men. There is the Sage, full of nervous thought and of unsullied fame, who dwells complacently alone. What can the vulgar herd know of me?” 