Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/234

 Li Po the Chinese Poet

��Prince of Ju-nan, Tsui Tsung-chi, Su Chin, Chang-Hsu, and Chiao Sui, he made up the "Eight Immortals of the Wine-cup." He implored for permission to return to the mountains; and the emperor gave gold and let him go.

Po roamed hither and thither. One time he took a boat with Tsui Tsung-chi from Tsai-shih to Chin-ling. Arrayed in the palace robe of brocade, he sat in the boat as though there were no mortal near him.

At the time of Au Lu-shan's rebellion Po lingered be- tween the Su-sung and the Kuang-luh mountains. Ling, Prince of Yung, called him and made him a subordinate of his staff. When Ling started war, Po fled to Peng-tse. But with the fall of Ling, Po was sentenced to death. Ere this, when Po was stopping in Ping-chou, he met Kuo Tsu-i and admired him. Once Tsu-i broke the law, and Po came to rescue and had him freed. So now Tsu-i petitioned to ransom Po with his own rank and title whereupon a rescript was issued for his perpetual ban- ishment at Yeh-lang.

He received pardon, and returned to Hsin-yang. There he was imprisoned on account of a certain affair, 2 when Sung Jo-ssu on his way to Honan with his army of three thousand men of Wu came to Hsin-yang, released the prisoner, and placed Po on his general staff. But be- fore long he resigned. When Li Yang-ping became Governor of Tang-tu, Po went to live with him.

Emperor Tai Tsung ascended the throne, 3 and he sum- moned Po to take the office of the censor of the court;

2 This story of Li Po's second incarceration and his subse- quent relations with Sung Jo-ssu is not authentic. Sung Jo-ssu was the man who memorialized the throne on behalf of Li Po at the occasion of the latter's imprisonment.

3 Tai Tsung ascended the throne in 763.

[208]

�� �