Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/419

 One branch of Korean classical music deals with convivial songs. This looks somewat paradoxical, but if Hogarth's paintings are classical, a convivial song may be.

We have here first the memory of the lost possibilities of youth; then the realisation of to-day's slavery, and, lastly, the mad rush to procure that which alone will bring forgetfulness. Not an exclusively Korean picture, surely.

In central Korea there is a lofty precipice overlooking a little lakelet. It is called " The Precipice of the Falling Flowers," and I venture to say that, with no other evidence at hand than this, the reader would be compelled to grant that Koreans have genuine poetic feeling in them, for the story is something as follows :

{{smaller block| In Pakche's halls is heard a sound of woe.

The craven King, with prescience of his fate,

Has fled, by all his warrior knights encinct.

Nor wizard's art nor reeking sacrifice

Nor martial host can stem the tidal wave

Of Silla's vengeance. Flight, the coward's boon,

Is his ; but by his flight his Queen is worse {{float center/e}}