Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/311

Rh days"; so summer is not over! "Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough"; so autumn has come, after all. "On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes"—it is not cold; "In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat"—but it is rather chilly. "Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away"—fine weather; "Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light"—but winter is coming. As for the last two lines, they simply complete the picture sketched out in these oppositions; they give us the relation of all these details to each other. The mind is focussed at the close in a single definite fact—autumn evening.

As if to show us how near this method is to the Chinese, Mr. Waley has given us in his introduction this specimen of a poem literally translated:

Here we have the Chinese technique in excelsis. A set of definite concrete statements are set against each other in balanced order to convey a perfectly abstract idea. We dull Occidentals have to be told that the poet who wrote this was sixty-three years of age. Then we see that the "returning steps" that "still hesitate" are those of the poet himself, and that his leisurely old age is contrasted throughout with the servant-girl's youth—she is impatient to get to bed; but, as Po Chü-i might say, "Water's colour at dusk is still white, but sunset's glow in the dark is gradually nil"; and if this statement does not receive an additional illumination from the last two lines, then you must be totally insensible either to the charm or to the substance of Chinese poetry.

I have dealt with this topic to some extent, as it is important. Indeed, the importance of the Chinese poets is that they came nearest of all poets to that complete fusion of substance and form which is