Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/46

 Li Po the Chinese Poet Taoism on his mind. In fact, the utilitarian principle of Confucian ethics was alien both to his temperament and to the circumstances of his life. The first thing he did after his dismissal from the court was to go to Chinan-fu and receive the Taoist diploma from the high priest of the sect, "wishing only (says Li Yang-ping) to return east to Peng-lai and with the winged men ride to the Scarlet Hill of Immortality." Peng-lai is the paradisical land of the Taoist, somewhere in the eastern sea. The poetry of Li Po reflects the gleams of such visionary worlds. His "Dream of the Sky-land," rivaling Kubla Khan in its transcendent beauty and imaginative power, could not have been written but by Li Po, the Taoist. Even in superstition and opium there is more than a Confucian philosophy dreams of.

But mysticism and solitude filled only one half of the poet's life. For he loved dearly the town and tavern—so much so that he is censured again by moralists as having been sordid. Li Po not only took too hearty an interest in wine and women, but he was also scandalously frank in advertising his delight by singing their praise in sweet and alluring terms. In this respect Li Po, like so many of his associates, was a thorough Elizabethan. Had the Eight Immortals of the Wine-cup descended from their Chinese Elysium to the Mermaid Tavern, how happy they would have been with their doughty rivals in song, humor, wit, capacity for wine, and ardent and adventurous, if at times erratic, spirit!

Li Po "ate like a hungry tiger," says Wei Hao, who should know; while according to another authority, "his big voice could be heard in heaven." In his early youth he exhibited a swashbuckling propensity, took to errantry,

See No. 77 [20]