Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/453

 has put an end to our king. It is (now) sending down those devourers of the grain, So that the husbandry is all in evil case. Alas for our middle states ! All is in peril and going to ruin. I have no strength (to do anything), And think of (the Power in) the azure vault.

King Hsüan does not occur by name in the ode, though the remarkable prayer which it relates is ascribed to a king in stanza 1. All critics have admitted the statement of the Preface that the piece was made, in admiration of king Hsüan, by Zăng Shû, a great officer, we may presume, of the court. The standard chronology places the commencement of the drought in 822, the sixth year of Hsüan's reign. How long it continued we cannot tell.

Bright was the milky way, Shining and revolving in the sky. The king said, 'Oh! What crime is chargeable on us now, That Heaven (thus) sends down death and disorder? Famine comes again and again. There is no spirit I have not sacrificed to ; There is no victim I have grudged; Our