Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/69

 15. THE SUMMIT TEMPLE To-night I stay in the Summit Temple. Here I could pluck the stars with my hand, I dare not speak aloud in the silence, For fear of disturbing the dwellers of heaven

The temple is in a district in Hupeh, so isolated from the outside world that this poem of Li Po, written on a painted board and left on the beams of the ceiling, remained unmolested for centuries until it was discovered by a local magistrate, thus settling a dispute over its authorship which had arisen in the meantime, some attributing the poem to a certain Yang, who was born mute—the story runs—but on being taken to a high tower one day when he was only a boy of a few years, composed and uttered this poem, of which the first line reads:  "A precipitous tower, one hundred feet high!" [43]