Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/137

 The Steep Road to Shuh

��Fleeing at morn before the savage tigers,

Fleeing at eve before the huge serpents,

Men are killed and cut up like hemp,

While the beasts whet their fangs and lick the blood.

Though many pleasures there may be in the brocade

city of Shuh, It were better to return to your house quickly. The road to Shuh is more difficult to climb than to climb

the steep blue heaven. I shrug my shoulders and heave a long sigh — gazing

into the west.

This is one of the most admired and most difficult poems of Li Po, certain portions of it being as vague as they are beautiful. Some commentators maintain that this was written at the time of the An Lu-shan rebellion, when the emperor Hsuan Tsung fled to Ssuchuan, to which course Li Po was opposed; but being in no posi- tion to declare his opinion openly, the poet voiced it thus in verse covertly. The poem hints at the double danger for the emperor in leaving his capital to the rebels who are tigers and serpents as well as in trusting his person to the hands of the strangers of Shuh, who might turn to wolves and leopards, while it dwells for the most part on the difficulty of the journey in a re- markably vivid and forceful language. The Road to Shuh runs from Shensi to Ssuchuan over the mountains.

As to those "strong men'* that died, there is this story: Some thousands of years ago, a prince in Shensi, know- ing the fondness of the king of Shuh, offered him his five daughters for wives. The king of Shuh despatched five strong men to fetch the princesses. It was on their homeward journey that the party saw a big serpent

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