Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/131

Rh Now in order to convince those who might still be sceptical that husbands in China truly love, can deeply love their wives, I could produce abundant proofs from Chinese history and literature. For this purpose I should particularly like to quote and translate here an elegy written on the death of his wife by Yuan Chen (元稹), a poet of the TangT'ang [sic] dynasty. But unfortunately the piece is too long for quotation here in this already too long article. Those acquainted with Chinese, however, who wish to know how deep the affection,—affection, true love and not sexual passion which in modern times is often mistaken for love,—how deep the love of a husband in China for his wife is, should read this elegy which can be found in any ordinary collection of the T'ang poets. The title of the elegy is, (遣悲懷)—"Lines to ease the aching heart." But as I cannot use this elegy for my purpose, I will, instead, give here a short poem of four lines written by a modern poet who was once a secretary of the late Viceroy Chang Chih-tung. The poet went togthertogether [sic] with his wife in the suite of the Viceroy to Wuchang and after staying there many years, his wife died. Immediately after he too had to leave Wuchang. He wrote the poem on leaving Wuchang. The words in Chinese are