Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/45

 Introduction ways of the transcendent mind." In modern terminology he was a romanticist.

Like Wordsworth he sought the solitude of hills and lakes. But he was a lover rather than a worshipper of Nature. He was "enamored of the hills," he says. To him the cloud-girt peak of Luh Shan, or the hollow glen of autumn, was not a temple but a home where he felt most at ease and free to do as he pleased—where he drank, sang, slept, and meditated. He spent a large part of his life out of doors, on the roads, among the flowering trees, and under the stars, writing his innumerable poems, which are the spontaneous utterances of his soul, responding, to the song of a mango bird or to the call of far waterfalls. And his intimate Nature-feeling gained him admission to a world other than ours, of which he writes:

Why do I live among the green mountains? I laugh and answer not. My soul is serene. It dwells in another heaven and earth belonging to no man— The peach trees are in flower, and the water flows on....

Taoism with its early doctrine of inaction and with its later fanciful superstitions of celestial realms, and supernatural beings and of death-conquering herbs and pellets fascinated the poet. Confucian critics, eager to whitewash him of any serious Taoistic contamination, declare that he was simply playing with the new-fangled heresy. But there is no doubt as to his earnestness. "At fifteen," he writes, "I sought gods and goblins." The older he grew, the stronger became the hold of [19]