Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/48

 Li Po the Chinese Poet Then, there was the inevitable pessimism of the old world. The thought of the evanescence of all temporal things brought him solace for life's disappointments, and at the same time subdued his great tameless spirit. The Chinese race was already old at Li Po's time, with a retrospect of milleniums on whose broad expanse the dynasties of successive ages were like bubbles. What Shakespeare came to realize in his mellowed years about the "cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces," was an obsession that seized on Li Po early in life. Thus it is that a pensive mood pervades his poetry, and many of his Bacchanalian verses are tinged with melancholy. Even when he is singing exultantly at a banquet table, his saddest thought will out, saying "Hush, hush! All things pass with the waters of the east-flowing river." [22]