Page:More Translations from the Chinese (Waley).djvu/14



'' T'ien-kung sun warm, pagoda door open; Alone climbing, greet Spring, drink one cup. Without limit excursion-people afar-off wonder at me; What cause most old most first arrived! ''

While many of the pieces in "170 Chinese Poems" aimed at literary form in English, others did no more than give the sense of the Chinese in almost as crude a way as the two examples above. It was probably because of this inconsistency that no reviewer treated the book as an experiment in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer.

In the present work I have aimed more consistently at poetic form, but have included on account of their biographical interest two or three rather unsuccessful versions of late poems by Po Chü-i.

For leave to reprint I am indebted to the editors of the English Review, Nation, New Statesman, Bulletin of School of Oriental Studies, and Reconstruction. [10]