SOURCE: Howard S. Levy, in Translations from Po Chü-i's Collected Works, translated and described by Howard S. Levy, Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1970, 181 p.

[In the following excerpt, Levy surveys several groups of Po Chü-i's poetry—including those of social criticism, in praise of pleasure and drinking, and lamenting aging and death—and explores their influence on Japanese literature.]

Chapter 3 The Poems of Social Criticism and Class Consciousness

… Po Chü-i had a great sympathy for the weak and the exploited, and he scorned those who oppressed the multitudes and profited at their expense. In his didactic poems, as an ally of the weak he frequently made appeals to the throne to relieve their sufferings. These are the poems of early maturity, written in his late thirties while he was serving at court as an imperial critic. They embody an early conviction that the poetic mission should be to reveal the situation of the masses and to suggest to the ruler ways and means to improve the general welfare. There are 172 poems in his collection under the didactic category; he assembled fifty of them in poetic forms based mainly on T'ang folksong patterns and referred to them as "New Music Bureau Poems". Yüan Chen also wrote fifteen poems in this style, which was probably initiated by the compositions no longer extant, of Li Shen (775-846). Po probably composed his New Music Bureau Poems in 809, though in some instances there is evidence of later revision. Chinese critic Ch'en Yin-k'o stated that Po's poems in this style were superior to those of Yüan Chen and that Po restricted himself to one subject in a poem, while Yüan Chen tended to be diffuse and unclear.¹ Many later poets imitated Po, but none achieved his social and literary effect. The "newness" of these poems in the New Music Bureau style was in their avoiding the use of stereotypes, restoring the cadences of folksongs, and combining didactic themes with a non-conventional outlook. One Chinese scholar has referred to them as pseudo-folksongs.²

Po Chü-i deplored the tendency of T'ang poets to flatter the sovereign in verse and to avoid words of remonstrance, saying that remonstrative words could not be found among the thousands of compositions submitted to the throne. To Po the result was tragic, for the Emperor's ears only heard words from his court—his eyes didn't see things which were happening in front of his gate: greedy officials remorselessly harmed the people, and rapacious ministers brazenly hid facts from him.³

A generation before, Tu Fu had reflected that those who wrote poems in the Music Bureau style should preserve the original intent of this genre, namely to enable one to reflect on customs and to discern the weighty from the trivial. Those in a superior position could use the poems to indoctrinate those below, while those in an inferior position could use them to criticize their superiors. Po, who admired Tu Fu, was also impressed by the poems in the Old Music Bureau style of Chang Chi (c. 765-830), a contemporary who had lived in poverty near Ch'ang-an for fifty years. He lamented the fact that Chang had been ignored by the court. Po stated in verse that Chang had worked on his Music Bureau poems for more than thirty years, reducing the volume of other writings as a consequence. Chang followed the principle of the Book of Odes, as did Po, and never wrote empty verse. His poems warned profligate sovereigns, condemned greedy ministers, expressed compassion for lowly prostitutes, and encouraged the downtrodden. Po noted that the sovereign who read Chang's poems could learn how to help the people and improve his own conduct. Chang worked on these poems day and night. Po regretted the failure of the T'ang to imitate the ancient Chou dynasty by appointing an official to select poems from throughout the empire to be used as guides on how to govern. Writing as if Chang were with him, Po sadly remarked that Chang's poems had been ignored and stated his fear that they would be unheard of after his death. Po wanted them to be collected and preserved for posterity, since to his way of thinking words were buds coming forth from the will, actions the roots of words. T'ang Ch'ü (fl. early ninth century), another of Po Chü-i's friends, was still poor at fifty; at his death he left only a thousand poems. Po stated in one poetic stanza that T'ang wept easily over disloyal behavior but that he, Po, couldn't weep. Therefore, he had composed the New Music Bureau poems to let the Emperor know of the people's sufferings. Each of Po's poems in this style is devoted to a single theme, described in a preceding sentence or phrase. As the poet makes clear in a general preface, his ambition in writing the poems was to emulate the didacticism of the Book of Odes, and his primary concern was with content rather than form. Despite his assertion that poetic form was of little concern, he tended to adhere to a seven-character line, with three-character lines often used to set the theme. Three-, five-, nine-, ten-, and eleven-character lines were interspersed, with each poem tending to number about forty or fifty lines, and with end-rhyme falling on the even lines.

Po Chü-i, then serving as a court critic, composed his didactic poems as a device to get the Emperor to listen to his opinions. He wanted him to discover the things concealed by fawning bureaucrats and to understand the feelings of the people. Po tried to clear the way of communication, a way blocked by greedy officials and rapacious ministers. He made known to the Emperor the impoverishment of the masses and suggested specific remedies.

For Po Chü-i to set himself against the central administration was an act of daring that could not be tolerated by those in influence. As the poet states in a letter to Yüan Chen, when the critical poems in the New Music Bureau collection became known, "Those close to the mighty and eminent looked at one another and lost color; those controlling the government clenched their fists in anger; and those in military power gnashed their teeth."⁴ Having incurred the hatred of those in authority, when he returned from mourning he came under attack and criticism, and in 815 was transferred from court and demoted in rank to be marshal of Chiang-chou. The ostensible cause was his filial disrespect, the real cause the enmities he had incurred through expressing frank opinions in poetry and prose.

The fifty poems in the New Music Bureau style vary greatly in readability and in the extent to which they still communicate ideas. A few of the poems concern history; these have so many allusions to past persons and events that they need lengthy annotation to be understood. These poems were intended for the Emperor and an intellectual court elite, and their circulation must have been restricted to a literate few. Most of them, however, focus on people or on things commonly encountered, and here the imaginative genius of the poet is such that he enters into the psyche of the person, conjures up the feeling of the inanimate, and proceeds from the concrete situation to the abstract generalization and the fitting conclusion. The seventh poem in the collection, entitled "White-Haired Person of Shangyang",⁵ is a good example of Po's poetic imagination at work, and I have therefore selected it for discussion and translation.

The intent of the poet was to criticize the centuriesold custom of incarcerating thousands of women, in the prime of life, so that they wasted away in the solitude of the harem, bereft of love, family, and mate. He made his points by criticizing, not his own times, but events in the reign of T'ang Hsiian-tsung that had occurred more than half a century before. Towards the end of Hsüan-tsung's reign, Precious Consort Yang monopolized the imperial favor, and after 748, potential harem rivals were relegated to secondary imperial harems such as Shang-yang in Loyang, the eastern capital subsidiary to Ch'ang-an. The effect of the poem is enhanced by a fictional elaboration of the theme, and the reader is moved to empathize with the forlorn harem occupant. By focusing on the sufferings of one, the poet achieves his objective of depicting the sufferings of all. Other poems on associated subjects make clear the poet's concern for the plight of woman in T'ang male-oriented society and his wish to improve her welfare. There are forty-one lines in this poem about a harem lady. The seven-character line dominates, varied by a few three-character lines, while two ten-character lines conclude. The seven-character lines are almost all divisible into two syntactical units, the first of four and the second of three characters. In my translation, these syntactical units are rendered by individual lines. The reference to the T'ien-pao era (742-55) is to the latter part of Hsüan-tsung's reign, which culminated in the rebellion of An Lu-shan and was followed by a decade of civil war. In writing about this harem occupant, Po includes terms commonly used in the palace. The title of "Documents Supervisor" was known prior to the T'ang, as early as the Three Kingdoms period. The fu poem by Lu Hsiang, erroneously attributed to Lu Shang, was written by a literatus who served Hsüan-tsung in an official capacity. Lu Hsiang wrote the poem to criticize the Emperor because he had recruited beauties for his harem from everywhere in the empire.⁶

A White-Haired Person of Shang-yang
(Lamenting her Unwed Solitude)

A person of Shang-yang,
a person of Shang-yang,
rose face aging unawares,
white hairs renewed.
Green-clothed eunuch overseers
guard the harem gates;
once locked behind me,
how many springs?
In Hsüan-tsung's closing years
I was first selected;
I entered at sixteen—today I am sixty!
Over a hundred, selected with me;
years dreary and desolate,
this body withered.

Remembering the past, holding back tears,
parting from my family.
They helped me into the carriage,
not letting me cry.
"Once you enter the palace
you'll enjoy His Lord's favor."
My face like the lotus,
my bosom like jade;
before it was permissible
that His Lord see me,
I was glared at askance
by Consort Yang,
who jealously ordered my secret transfer
to Shang-yang Palace.

My whole life there,
facing an empty room;
living in an empty room
autumn nights are long,
long and sleepless,
unbrightened by dawn.
Withered candle flickering,
shadowy wall reflection;
lonely sighing hidden rain
beating a window sound.
So long the spring days,
long the day, sitting lone,
so hard for day to darken.
Sweet songs of palace orioles,
in melancholy, I loathe to hear.
Swallows on the cross-beams paired,
jealousy stilled through old age.
Orioles returned, swallows departed;
forever was I grieved and bereft.
Spring left, autumn came;
I can't remember the years.
I only faced the harem depths,
looked towards the bright moon;
it returned in fullness
east-west hundreds of times.

In the harem today
I'm the oldest.
His Highness bestowed on me
the title of Documents Supervisor.
My shoes are pointed,
my dress tight-fitting,
my eyebrows sombre colored,
slender and elongated.
Outsiders don't see me—
if they did, they'd surely laugh,
for these were the fashions
at the end of T'ien-pao.

A person of Shang-yang,
distressed most of all;
distressed in youth,
distressed in old age,
this lifelong distress,
comparable to what?
Haren't you seen Lu Shang's
poem of old about the beauties?
Now won't you look at my song,
about a white-haired one of Shang-yang?

Yüan Chen also wrote about harem ladies. One of his most famous poems, written in a nostalgic vein, describes aging harem residents and indirectly shows the close relationship between the poetic themes of Yüan Chen and Po Chü-i:

Fallen-desolate the old provisional palace;
palace flowers red in loneliness.
White-haired palace ladies
idly sit and talk of Hsüan-tsung.⁷

The poems by Po Chü-i in the New Music Bureau style cover a multitude of themes. The poet was concerned by the tendency in T'ang China to prefer everything foreign, and in several poems he criticized the influx of non-Chinese songs, dances, and cosmetic fashions. Po Chü-i and Yüan Chen extolled ancient music and scorned modern music, calling for a return to the old ways in order to pacify the people. Po had a personal view of dynastic history; he felt that the introduction of foreign elements into the national consciousness had weakened the body politic and prepared the way for rebellion by the non-Chinese An Lu-shan and an aftermath of civil chaos and unrest. Some of his older acquaintances had lived through the rebellion, and the reaction against "barbarians" still persisted. In his own times, Po cautioned against treating greedy barbarians too lavishly when they appeared at court. Po Chü-i was radical in his condemnation of corruption and his compassion for the mute suffering of the masses, but his Confucian-oriented radicalism looked back to past ages and benevolent rulers for solutions. In seeking to restore effective government and humane rule, he was oriented towards reverence of Confucian classics and orthodox interpretations of such classics. Saddened by the neglect of ancient music and the decline of the ancient tunes, Po argued that the spirits above would never be moved by the poor musical productions of his own era and that the tunes now heard failed to stir the people to patriotic reflection.

He was a nationalist but not a jingoist and was vehemently against the waging of wars in foreign lands, knowing it was the people who paid for military adventures. He launched a poetic attack against the foreign aggressions of Chinese armies, developing his argument out of an incident involving an old man who had broken one arm deliberately to avoid conscription and service abroad, thereby escaping the holocausts of war. He also underscored the profiteering of frontier military officials and stated that generals were overbearing and proud in the royal presence, while great civil officials suffered the indignity of being virtually ignored and dismissed after brief and cursory audiences. In one of his poems he castigated frontier officials who did nothing constructive and submitted false claims of victory. He also criticized the tendency of militarists to feast, frolic, and spend lavishly. Po wrote with the anger of the direct participant and the immediate observer.

Po revealed in these poems philosophic interests in Buddhism and Taoism but shared Yüan Chen's disdain for the ways in which these religions expanded their holdings. In one poem he criticized the increase of Buddhist temples at the expense of dwellings for the masses; in another he ridiculed the Taoist religion for encouraging a futile search for longevity not propounded in the writings of Lao-tzu. He involved himself in the human equation. When he looked at a luxurious rug, he thought of the hardships of the weaver and concluded that it was best to use the thousands of silken stands to clothe the poor in the locale in which the rug was made. When he looked at silks, he likewise thought of the labor that had gone into the making of the finished product. His compassion extended to the animal as well as to the human world; a poor ox which spilt its blood in toil so that a chief minister might enjoy the privileges of a special private roadway was vividly described. He cited the case of a charcoal seller to criticize the terrible exactions made of the poor by buyers sent out from the palace, and was distressed by the poverty of the peasants, heavily taxed in times of drought and devoid of food or clothing for the year to come. He advised the sovereign to follow precedent by listening to the humble and by regarding them as mirrors reflecting the true state of the empire. He requested in verse that the wall between the Emperor and his subjects be cleaved through, just as a famous ancient sword could cleave through to the sun and the Heavens.

Objects in nature served his poetic-ideological purposes. He gave a fictional account of a rock, relating how on it were inscribed the names of those loyal to the throne in times of peril. He used the writing brush as a symbol to castigate those in high office who misused it by being dishonest in their writings. And in his final poem, he exhorted the Emperor to welcome poems of criticism like his own in order to find out how people really felt, and reminded his sovereign that in antiquity the critical poet-official was not incriminated by his didactic poems and that everyone read and reflected on his social comments.

The second poem in the New Music Bureau style which I have selected for translation, the thirtieth in the collection, describes the plight of the peasant in times of natural disaster and is entitled "An Old Man of Tu-ling". Tu-ling, an area in the southern suburbs beyond Ch'ang-an, suffered from famine in the late spring of 809. The poem contains twenty-three lines, all seven characters in length, except for two three-character lines, two five-character lines, and one nine-character line.

An Old Man of Tu-ling

An old man of Tu-ling,
living at Tu-ling,
yearly cultivating
a dozen acres of barren ground.
The third month rainless,
a drought arose;
the young wheat grew not,
mostly yellowed and died.
Frost fell in the ninth month,
autumn soon got cold;
before the ears of corn ripened,
they greened and withered.

The official in charge clearly knew
but didn't report it.
He hurriedly taxed, forcibly exacted,
seeking a good showing for himself.
To get the tax
I pawned the mulberries,
sold the land; next year
what will I do for food and clothing?
Stripping the clothes from my body,
snatching the rice from my mouth.
Oppressors of men and despoilers of things
are ravenous wolves;
why must hooklike claws and sawlike teeth
eat human flesh?

Who it was I don't know,
but someone reported to the Emperor.
His heart was moved with compassion;
he learned of man's corruption.
On white hemp paper
virtuous words resounded,
and all fields by the capital
were freed from this year's taxes.

Yesterday a village clerk
came to my door
holding the royal wooden tally
to be displayed in the hamlets.
But of every ten households to be taxed,
nine have already paid;
so in emptiness they receive
Their Lord's tax remission.

Po officially recommended to the Emperor that taxes be reduced and harem expenditures curtailed. These recommendations were followed and, in true Confucian fashion, the rains came.

The fifty didactic poems in the New Music Bureau style are the best known. Next in fame is a cluster of ten poems completed earlier by Po Chü-i in 807 and entitled "Songs of Ch'in". As the poet explained in a brief foreword to the poems, they were written about things which saddened him when he was in Ch'ang-an in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. In one poem he revealed that when he first wrote the "Songs of Ch'in", his friend T'ang Ch'ü alone appreciated them and wept as he read them a second time. T'ang sent him thirty of his own poems, and after T'ang's death he opened the case to look at them, only to find that they were moth-eaten. Po and poetic friends like T'ang Ch'ü carried on a friendly rivalry, and were not professionally petty or jealous about one another's writings.

The "Songs of Ch'in" are in the five-character old poetic style line, with end rhyming of the even-numbered lines. They vary in length from sixteen to thirty lines. The poems are permeated with the poet's class consciousness and keen awareness of the contrast between poverty and wealth, and there is in them an admirable insistence on clear thinking and forthright expression. The impact of the poems at court must have been considerable, for the poet reveals that powerful and aristocratic groups there paled when they heard them.

He begins the "Songs of Ch'in" series with a discussion of marriage, contrasting the ease with which rich girls get married with the hardships endured by poor and virtuous maidens when they want to wed. He next stresses the superior qualifications of the maiden reared in poverty. For dramatic effect, the poet creates an imaginary conversation, in which he addressed himself to a prospective groom and a wedding party:

Discussing Marriage⁸

There is no absolute musical standard in the world,
for each enjoys that which pleases his ears.
There is no absolute beauty standard among men,
for each enjoys that which pleases his eyes.
Beauty is only a matter of slight degree,
but rich and poor are clearly distinguished!
The poor are always cast aside,
but everyone flocks to the rich.

A girl of a rich family, in a vermillion mansion,
wears a jacket of embroidered silk, spun with golden threads,
doesn't draw hands back into sleeves upon seeing a man,
and at early sixteen is womanly but ignorant.
Mother and elder brother haven't begun to talk about it
when she is married in an instant.
A girl of a poor family, within green windows,
passes the age of twenty in lonely solitude.
Her thorn hairpins are worthless,
and no pearls embellish her dress;
she is on the verge of betrothal several times,
but prospective bridegrooms falter as the day approaches.

The groom-to-be assembles go-between,
filling wine to overflowing in a jade pot:
"Everyone seated, don't drink yet,
but listen to me sing of the two ways.
The girl of a rich family easily weds,
weds early and slights her husband;
the girl of a poor family finds it hard to wed,
weds later and is filial to her mother-in-law.
Hearing that you wish to take a wife,
may I ask what your intentions are?"

Po Chü-i next contrasted the wealth of the tax collector and the goods turning to dust in the imperial warehouse with the poverty of the oppressed peasants. He described an official who lived in a splendid mansion with so much food in his kitchen that it rotted. Pointedly, he asked the official in verse if he didn't have any hungry relatives to feed and reminded him that wealth didn't last forever, citing the case of a mansion which had been converted into a government park.⁹ The poet was grieved by the fickleness of friendship; a scholar with whom he had been very close when they both were poor achieved eminence, and now when they met in the street the scholar passed him by as if they had never met. The fifth poem in the Ch'in series, concerning government service, could apply with equal validity to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, for in it Po deplored the way in which old men ignored the instruction in one of the classics to resign from office by the age of seventy and instead clung to their jobs to the very end. There were men of his time of eighty and ninety, half-blind and half-toothless, who had such greed for profit that they refused to retire. Po Chü-i scorned the custom of setting up monuments to the worthless, composing empty words to them as if in life they had had the virtues of Confucius. He contrasted this hypocrisy with the example of a beloved village official, poor and honest, who died with no monument raised to him but who was still remembered in the hearts of the villagers.

He castigated court officials for their pride and selfsatisfaction. To illustrate the differences in outlook between the ruling and the ruled, the last two lines of the seventh of the songs of Ch'in contrasted the abundance of food and drink on official tables with a recent drought in Kiangnan that had led to cannibalism among the starving. In a poem evoking winter scenes, a warden and a judge were described as they dined in warmth and luxury in a splendid mansion while, unbeknownst to the warden, his prisoners were freezing to death from the cold. In Po's final poem of the series, lamenting the gap between rich and poor, a villager sees a cluster of beautiful flowers on sale and sighs because with the sales price being asked, the taxes of ten average households could be paid. One verse laments the preference for new music, a favorite subject of Po Chii-i's; elsewhere he achieves a dramatic variation on this plaint by telling the story of a discarded lute. The lute was dusty and for a long time had been unheard. Its sounds were mournful. It wanted to play for the sovereign but he didn't want to hear it, preferring barbarian instruments instead. Apart from these wistful looks towards a Chinese musical past, the ten "Songs of Ch'in" concerned themselves with unmasking the abuses committed by authorities who were either oblivious to the suffering about them, or who aggravated such suffering because of their rapaciousness and irresponsibility.

The poems in the Music Bureau style and the "Songs of Ch'in" make up over one third of the first part of the collection of poems of social criticism. The other 112 poems, mostly written in a five-character line, old poetic style, similarly propound the values of truth, friendship, integrity, loyalty, and sympathy for the oppressed. The first poem in the collection, praising Emperor Hsien-tsung, was written when Po was thirtysix years old, just after a time when no rain had fallen from winter to the following spring. The Emperor was worried at this sign of Heaven's displeasure and he confessed his guilt in an imperial proclamation. He lightened criminal sentences, released women from his harem, and reduced the number of horses in the imperial stables. He also ordered that the starving be fed, and in general delighted the underprivileged with his behavior. A week later, it rained for three days and the grains turned green. The poet realized that the ruler in his heart shared the joys and griefs of his subjects, congratulated him on such an auspicious beginning, and hoped that he would some day enjoy an equally auspicious ending. The advice by implication was that the Emperor should stave off disaster by identifying his needs with the needs of the masses. There was then a belief current that droughts could be caused by the excess of female (yin) over male (yang) elements, evidenced by a profusion of woman in the imperial harem. The poet described famine conditions, when people tried to barter land for food, and during a summer drought he asked Heaven why it was that rain hadn't fallen for such a long time. Writing about village poverty in winter, he felt ashamed of being well fed and clothed. He contrasted the toil of the peasants with his own affluence; unlike the toilers, he got his wheat without having to drudge for it:

Thinking of this,
secretly I felt ashamed,
and all day
couldn't put it out of my mind.

To avoid the heat on a stifling, hot day, he escaped to a Buddhist pagoda beyond the city gates and reflected that while he could do so, the withered crops could not. He seemed to enjoy religious sites because they gave him a chance to "get away from it all" and to meditate at leisure, but he looked askance at fanatics, such as the Taoist adept who cherished the thought that through religion he could have eternal life on earth. He reiterated that those who sought the longevity of Immortals did so in vain and related what happened to someone who based his foolish behavior on the import of a dream. He was told in the dream that immortality could be gained in fifteen years, and he waited for thirty before finally reverting to the earth like a pile of dung. Immortality was something beyond the human potential, and to waste a lifetime on the search was absurd:

How pitiful!
To dream of an Immortal,
and for one dream
to ruin a life.

Po, rich in compassion, wept for those who met with a tragic fate. He was a friend in deed and he composed many elegy-like remembrances in verse for fellow scholars of worth who had died obscure and unsung. It was his general observation that Confucian scholars of the times studied hard but in poverty, while the sons of the rich were ignorant, profligate, and influential. There seemed to be no way out of this paradox either in T'ang or in antiquity. He praised one scholar for being poor and hungry but content and another scholar for looking upon gold as if it were dirt. While in Ch'ang-an in 810, he heard that K'ung Kan (retired 807) had died in Loyang, and he wept at the news. He portrayed K'ung as one who was upright and unwavering in the Way, serving with rare competence. When K'ung went to Loyang, everyone thought that he should be employed in a high position, but sadly he spent his life in obscurity and never came before the imperial presence. He died like any ordinary man, his steadfastness reverting emptily to earth. Po asked rhetorically: "If Heaven doesn't love the people, why does it produce benevolent ones like K'ung? If Heaven does love the people, why does it take his life so abruptly? Heaven's ways are hard to grasp, but who holds the key to fate?"

His poems of social import include detailed exchanges with Yüan Chen, in which he responds to poems by Yüan; these are generally much more difficult to read and understand. Po also comments in verse on histori cal situations, referring to events which occurred in former dynastic eras and assigning praise or blame to the participants in accord with his moral-didactic views. Since he possessed a vivid imagination, everything in the universe was subject to his poetic touch. He based many of his poetic arguments and criticisms on similies and used ordinary objects, either natural or man-made, to expand his themes. These provided the base and the points of departure for him to launch general observations from particular instances. It was in the closing lines of a poem that he might reveal a truth he felt about the human condition:

Heaven-cold, no sun's light;
T'ai-hsing Peak is vast.
I've heard of its dangers,
and now I go alone.
The horse's hooves, cold and slippery.
It winds like a sheep's intestines,

it can't be climbed.
But if you compare it to life's difficulties,
it seems more level than the palm of one's hand.

Similes were everywhere and at his poetic service. When sons of two friends failed official examinations, he comforted his friends by likening the failure to the solitary lute and the virtuous pine, which remained aloof from the throng. He advocated filial piety. In commenting poetically about a man who had left his parents, he drew an analogy from nature to show that even swallows grieved when their young left the nest; this should make one aware, he concluded, of the feelings of one's parents. And he complained that, while the bird cried for its lost mother, people were not even as filial as birds. He compared an autumnal scene to the evanescence of fame sought by shallow officials, the dismissal of a friend from office to a tree in the courtyard killed by frost. Just as the homely jujube tree could be used in making carriage wheels, so were men who were upright and firm better than officials who were attractive but treacherous Po described a tree which, like him, should be at court but instead was isolated on a mountain. The talented went their ways unappreciated, like unseen beauties of nature. He wished to send white temple lotuses to Ch'ang-an but feared that once the lotuses left the mountains they would perish in the mortal realm below. Broken pines were like distressed scholars. He envied birds and fishes travelling in groups, for he was alone. Other similes in this first section are:

The wistaria looks pretty, but it enfolds itself around a tree like a snake and kills the tree. This is like treacherous ministers and evil wives, so Emperors, take heed.

Lotuses are transplanted to a dir pond where they can't emit fragrance, like men forced to serve in unsatisfactory posts.

An enlightened ruler should use his ministers as one uses the falcon to catch birds, neither overfeeding or underfeeding.

The t'ung tree stands alone, fragrant in spring but unappreciated by passersby. (This is probably an indirect reference to his being ignored by the ruler.)

Everyone ignores the white peowy, preferring red and purple to white, but beauty or ugliness is not in the thing itself but in the heart of the observer. (Among T'ang poets the peony was a common metaphor. It was a symbol of the yang principle and represented masculinity, brightness, good luck, and distinction.)¹⁰

A certain tree is beautiful, but its fruits are so fragrant that one can't bear to eat them. Many things in the world are like this; truth and falsehood are hard to distinguish. There are hidden thorns in beauty, and bitter taste and injuriousness may be concealed.

The pine tree is like the heart of Yüan Chen, straight and unyielding. (The pine symbolized constancy in adversity.)¹¹

The tree stands alone like jade, as a stand.

A sharp sword may be compared to talent and good jade to virtue, but virtue is superior to talent. A sword melts in the furnace but jade does not.

There is a sword, broken through reasons unknown, which is now left in the ground and ignored. The poet preferred hardness to softness; (it is) better to be a straight broken sword than a curved hook.

The crane is virtuous and flies alone. Those who flurry about for wealth and fame are to be criticized.

It is hard to see one's fate, which is like the division of the flowers and the trees. Heaven doesn't grant more than one good attribute to each. The lichee is sweet but not pretty, the peony pretty but not sweet.

In one poem Po noted the uncertainty of riches and in another said that age, good fortune, influence, and position were taken from us like thieves in the night. He was aware of the then popular belief that certain houses in Ch'ang-an were haunted because of the calamities that befell previous owners, but he refuted the belief. What happened in a house depended on its residents, he said, and the house itself had nothing to do with it. Everyone feared calamity, he continued, but the reasons for calamity were predictable. Those in power easily fell out of power, especially if they were proud and haughty. He stated his viewpoint in still another way, noting that one could not get to be rich and influential merely by living on a site of good fortune. He concluded that the Chou dynasty lasted for eight hundred years but the Ch'in dynasty only three generations because of governing principles rather than fortuitous circumstance. Glory and fortune changed overnight; it was hard to stay in power, easy to be expelled.

Po chü-i was an earnest advocate of his political and moral convictions, but his earnestness was tempered by the realization that fame and influence were transient. He was attracted by the joys of life that accorded with one's personal tastes and philosophical interests. This ability to enjoy life as a man apart, as well as a bureaucrat within, stood him in good stead during his official service in the capital and his transfers to points beyond. It moved him to create poems in a harmonious and non-rebellious mood, the poems of quiet pleasures to be discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter 4 The Poetry of Pleasure: In Praise of Drinking

As we have seen, Po Chü-i's first advocacy was that poetry should contribute to the advancement of politics. He also proposed that one seek happiness in private life by cultivating frugality, reasonableness, and the enjoyment of pleasure in suitable propositions. His second advocacy differed from the first (in which he strived to achieve happiness for the masses) in that here he was proposing one's right to a personal pursuit of happiness. He wrote 186 poems on this theme, calling them poems of quiet pleasures, and placed them in the second section of his collection.

Please bear in mind that these poems were composed from 803 to 823, while he was in government service. They do not follow his didactic poems chronologically, as some Japanese scholars have implied, but parallel most of them in time. Slightly more than half were written prior to his demotion as marshal of Chiang-chou in 815, while the remainder were composed during his next eight years of service, which culminated in his appointment as governor of Hangchou. The concurrent composition of didactic and poetry of personal pleasure suggests that Po Chü-i was a split personality, embodying within himself at the same time the Confucian man of duty and the Buddhist-Taoist recluse. A desire to withdraw from the mundane world and the struggles of the market place, noticeable in his youth, heightened when he was demoted to Chiang-chou in 815, at the age of forty-three. And this sense of alienation became an integral part of Po's world outlook in the years that followed. Several critics stressed his Buddhist and Taoist leanings and exalted him as one who had the characteristics of an Immortal or a Buddhist adept. But such interpretations dealt only with the philosophic aspect of Po's writings.¹

As he wrote to his friend Yüan Chen, Po's so-called poems of quiet pleasure were composed when he withdrew from public life and lived alone; when he lived quietly under the pretext of illness; and when he sang of love.² (The love referred to here must have been a love for nature and for predecessor and contemporaries.) These poems describe the joys of private life—the life apart from public involvement—in which his companions are song, lute, and wine, probably in that order. Such pleasures were to be enjoyed quietly and in peaceful contemplation of surrounding nature, with the poet striving philosophically not to counterbalance his involvement with society but rather to blot out memories of its very existence. There is not the overt display of vigor in these poems that we have seen in the didactic poetry, for as the poet himself stated in a letter to Yüan Chen, the features common to all were light thought and meandering expression.³ The poet stressed again and again in these poems his contempt for and indifference to, worldly gain. This avowed indifference may have been a reflection of how he reacted to the political fluctuations and uncertainties of his times, for while he later occupied much higher posts than that of imperial critic in Ch'ang-an (808-10), never again did he take such an active role in policy formulation or show such direct concern with political events at the court. His work shifted from political involvement with the central bureaucracy towards consideration of less urgent administrative and office routine.⁴

With one minor exception, Po Chü-i wrote his poems of quiet pleasure in the five-character line, old-poetry style. There was rhyming of the even lines but no fixed internal tonal arrangements, and the poet expressed himself freely. The poems, varying in length from four to 260 lines, generally total sixteen to twenty lines. He derived thematic inspiration from T'ao Yüanming and Wei Ying-wu. T'ao was the poet-drinker-recluse of earlier centuries who finally spurned officialdom in favor of rustic retirement, while Wei was an older T'ang contemporary who likewise preferred the quiet life. Po expressed his admiration for T'ao and Wei in a verse written in 815, which he inscribed on the wall of a terrace. He referred to T'ao as "T'ao P'eng-tse" because T'ao had once served as magistrate of P'eng-tse County. Wei was called "Wei Chiang-chou" in the poem because, like Po, he had been sent to Chiang-chou in demotion. Wei, who had been governor of Suchow, was usually referred to as "Wei Suchow" rather than "Wei Chiang-chou". The places named in the poem were located in the vicinity of Hsün-yang; the "Great River" referred to the Yangtze. Po concluded the poem by modestly confessing to a feeling of shame at having had the audacity to compose a poem in the area formerly graced by T'ao and Wei, two of China's Poet-Immortals:

I am always fond of P'eng-tse;
literary thoughts so elevated and profound!
I also marvel at Wei Chiang-chou;
poetic feelings likewise pure and quiet.
This morning I climb this terrace
and know why they were as they were;
the Great River is cold and one sees to its depths,
the Lu Mountains are green and lean against Heaven.
Deep night—the moon at P'en River;

usual dawn—the smoke at Lu Peak.
Clear brilliance and spirit vapors
day and night supply poetic matter.
I lack the talent of the two men,
so what can I do on coming here?
Because of the elevation
perchance I compose a poem,
but look up and down,
feeling ashamed (before) river and mountain.

Po was in Suchow in 786 during his youth, while Wei Ying-wu was serving there as governor. Wei achieved literary fame in his lifetime and was called a Poet-Immortal. Wei liked the simple and the quiet; he would burn incense, sweep his quarters clean, and sit in meditation. Wei's poems were quiet and tranquil, brief but deep in underlying meaning. In his lifetime Wei was compared to T'ao Yüan-ming, and when conversing, people coupled their names. Po Chü-i emulated Wei and T'ao by trying to adopt a frugal and quiet way of life unrelated to worldly gain and to describe this with directness and effect. He revealed that he intended to make Wei's poetic attitudes his own and praised his predecessor for the purity and elegance of his lines and the lofty sentiments and quiet candor of his poems.

When his mother died in 811, Po withdrew from official life to observe the mourning period and remained in retirement until 814. While living north of the Wei River, he wrote sixteen drinking poems in emulation of twenty poems about the pleasures of wine which T'ao Yüanming had composed more than four centuries before. T'ao was famous for two things—being a recluse and drinking wine. It was not until about a hundred years after T'ao's death that a complete collection of his works was compiled. T'ao once said that there was wine in one poem after another of his, and it was this poet-to-wine relationship that primarily interested later researchers, Lu Hsün included.⁵ So in general, when one speaks of T'ao Yüan-ming one thinks of wine. The wine theme is found in about half of the 130 poems in T'ao's extant collection. Twenty are entitled, "Drinking Wine", and these are the twenty which set the theme for Po Chü-i. Like Po, T'ao failed to achieve his social objectives; wine-imbibing by both men helped them to relax and forget the outside world. T'ao realized deeply the inevitability of death and regretted only that because of poverty he hadn't drunk enough wine in his life. T'ao's official rank was low and he was always poor, a member of the small landowner class. When he died in 427, at the age of sixty-two, people gave him the posthumous name of "Mr. Quiet and Chaste".

T'ao and Po wrote prefaces to their drinking poems. T'ao explained that he was living in withdrawal from society, drinking night after night. In a tipsy state, he composed some lines to amuse himself, in no particular order, and had an old friend write them down for him. T'ao concluded with the hope that his compositions might amuse the reader.⁶ Po stated in his preface that during a prolonged rainy season he closed the gates of his home and stayed inside. Having no other way to amuse himself, he warmed and drank home-made wine, often getting tipsy and sleeping away the daylight hours. Po felt lazy and did as he wished, taking up one thing and forgetting another. He chanted T'ao's poetry aloud and found that it accorded with his mood. He then wrote sixteen poems in imitation, using the same five-character old-style form. When Po sobered up, he laughed at the wild words he had written but saw no reason to conceal them from his friends. Po may have been moved to emulate T'ao in such verse because he revered him for having left official service to return to his native village and till the soil and for refusing to return. A study of Po Chili's poetic themes reveals a recurring mood of yearning to withdraw permanently from the bureaucracy. Po's poems on drinking are more subjective than T'ao's compositions on the same theme, for he tends to write about how he feels while T'ao tends to write impersonally about the nature of man. Po writes about the "I" of man, T'ao about the "non-I" of nature. Po used scattered words and phrases from T'ao and had far more descriptive and connective words than T'ao. He therefore is less cryptic and easier to understand.

Po's first poem in the series contrasts the brevity and uncertainty of life with the permanence and inevitability of death, which spares not even the sage. (T'ao's first poem stressed the constant change in human fortunes as envinced by glory and decay.)

The unmoving—thick earth;
the unresting—high heaven.
The immeasurable—sun and moon;
the long existing—mountains and rivers.
Pines and cypresses, turtles and cranes,
all live a thousand years.
Alas! Among all beings
Only man is not so.
He goes out early to court and market
and by night has reverted to the nether springs.
One's shape-substance and life-fate
are as imperilled as wisps of smoke.
Yao and Shun, Chou and K'ung,⁷
anciently proclaimed Sages and Worthies—
but if you ask where they are today,
they went once and did not return.
I don't have the herb of no death.
All things shift in accord with change;
what is not definitely known
is the brevity or duration of the interval.
Lucky when we have a healthy day,
we should sing before the wine cup.
Why wait for someone to persuade me?
I think of this for my own amusement.

Po's second poem evokes a mood of solitary communion with sombre Nature: "Cloud piled on cloud for more than a month; Heaven lowering, daily rains. When I raise the screen and look at Heaven's colorings, the yellow cloud formations are as dark as earth. Accumulations of rainwater destroy the fence; swift winds damage the roof. Common weeds grow in the courtyard; the fields are lost in mud. The village depths are cut off from visitors; the windows are dark and companionless."

All day I don't leave my bed;
leaping frogs occasionally enter my door.
Leaving the gates, there's no place to go.
Entering the room, I return to my lonely place.
If I don't amuse myself with wine,
who can I talk to in my aloneness?

Po's next poem describes how he amused himself in the rain. In the morning he drank a cup of wine to attune his spirit with the universe. Like an unthinking oaf, he still lay in bed with the sun on high. He read at night, and it was as if the ancients were saying fine words to him. He was as pleased as if he had met them. He sat alone in the depths of night, with his lute at hand, and had more than enough time to press down on the strings. He composed poems with mad rapidity, and could not put down the writing brush. With three or four things (books, wine, lute, and poems), he passed days and nights. Therefore, while it rained he didn't leave his cottage for a ten-day period.

First do I realize that one who lives alone
with a peaceful heart can also pass the time.

The poet compassionately considered the plight in which his neighbors had been placed by the incessant rains, describing how a woman who gathered silkworms to the west tilled the soil but sorrowed because the beans she had planted sprouted prematurely because of the rains.

But I alone, how happy,
warming wine just as I please.

When the rainy spell coincided with the new brewing of a wine, he opened the bottle and filled the cup, a goblet of liquid jade and gold. Holding the wine cup was a pleasure and tasting the wine a delight. With one drink color came to his face; with a second drink melancholy disappeared. Four or five glasses, and tipsiness diffused every limb.

Suddenly I forget
the distinction
between myself and others.
Who is to distinguish
the right and the wrong?

"The rains continue night after night, and I am helplessly drunk and oblivious. My heart is so topsy-turvy that I am laughed at by my (rain-)worried neighbors."

The fifth poem in the series might be dedicated to drinkers and the art of drinking:

Morning—alone in drunken song;
night—alone in drunken sleep.
One jug of wine not yet emptied,
already drunk three times alone.
I don't mind drinking too little,
but delight in the good
that little quickly brings.
One cup and then another—
three or four at the most.
I then am pleased at heart,
external things all forgotten.
Forcing another drink on myself,
in exuberance I leave every entanglement.
He who drinks at once a vast amount
merely considers quantity as precious;
but when he gets helplessly drunk,
he's no different from me.
So laughingly I tell heavy drinkers,
"Why foolishly waste wine money?"

This drinking poem gives evidence that Po Chü-i was not a heavy drinker, but one who could feel the effects of three or four cupfuls. He regarded wine as a stimulant which weakened the bonds of the vexatious world, but in this poem he expressed a preference for moderation. Here Po also depicts the way of the poor, who cannot afford to drink excessively. To the man in straitened circumstances, drinking to excess by another may seem a form of unparalleled gluttony. Po's poor-man philosophy on drinking contrasts with that once expressed in verse by T'ao, who said he regretted only that he hadn't drunk enough wine in his life. Po Chü-i drank in the surroundings of his home, but unlike Li Po, for example, was not a carouser.⁸

The weather finally cleared: "It is an autumn day, not a cloud in the sky, not a dust speck on quiet earth. Round-round the new moon, a white disc arising beyond the forest. I remember yesterday's darkness and rain; it has rained continuously by now for thirty or forty days. I entrust myself to homemade wine and am unaware of time's passage. I say to myself that I can stop drinking when the rains stop, but

When I face the color of the new moon,
unless I drink it saddens me.

What remains of the wine jug by the head of the bed has an especially good aroma; I take it beneath the southern eaves and raise it to drink with diligence. Its sparkling clarity enters the cup and (I drink until) the white dew arises on my clothes. Then I know that, day or night, how can I do without Mr. Wine? I have poems in the Music Bureau style, composed but not as yet made known:

This morning I was drunkenly elated
and wildly sang, startling the neighbors.
Alone I enjoy (the moon) again and again—
how much better together with friends!

To Po Chü-i the moon symbolized homesickness and thoughts of home, for everyone shared the view of the moon, no matter where: "Mid-autumn festival, the fifteenth night; bright moon at the front eaves. I approach the wine goblet but suddenly don't drink, remembering ordinary life pleasures. I have like-hearted persons, the far-far Ts'ui and Ch'ien; I have vanished-trace friends, the distant-distant Li and Yüan. Maybe they have soared to clouds of high officialdom, maybe they have fallen twixt rivers and lakes. You haven't seen me now for three or four years and I've no ground-shrinking magic. And you aren't wine-flying Immortals. How can I get all four to come and talk under the bright moon? It is hard to find such a good night, but destiny precludes our meeting. The bright moon won't remain and it gradually descends to the southwest. How can there fail to be other meetings for us? Regretfully (I stand) before this scene!

"Ts'ui" refers to Po's friend Ts'ui Hsüan-liang (772-833), "Ch'ien" to Ch'ien Hui (755-829), "Li" to Li Chien (764-821), and "Yüan" to Yüan Chen. By the time the poem was written, Yüan Chen had been sent to Chiangling in demotion.⁹ The eighth poem in the collection adopts several words and phrases from T'ao Yüanming's poems on drinking and other themes.¹⁰ "Double-Nine" was a festival held on the ninth day and ninth month of the lunar calendar, a day on which special foods were prepared and eaten. One also climbed hills and on hilltops drank chrysanthemum wine to ward off malevolent influences.¹¹ The introductory theme for Po's poems seems to have been taken from the ninth poem in T'ao's wine series, in which he describes a knock on the door and a visit by an old villager with a wine jug. Here is Po's eighth poem:

Homemade wine all drunk up,
no wine on credit in the village.
Seated in melancholy, sober tonight,
what to do about autumnal feelings?
A guest suddenly knocks on my gate;
how fine his words are!
"I'm an old man of South Village,
coming to call with a jug of wine."
Delighted that the jug isn't dry,
how can I ask how much is in it?
Though Double-Nine has passed,
there are chrysanthemums remaining by the eaves.
I am delighted, but distressed by day's brevity;
before we realize it, night falls.
Don't go back so hastily, old man;
wait for the new moon's splendor.
The guest leaves but interest remains—
all day I drink and sing alone.

Po next likened himself to Yüan Hsien and Yen Hui, two of Confucius' poor disciples; he was cold and hungry, but the little he had sufficed, and he enjoyed mental tranquillity and lived in leisure near the pure waters of the Wei River. There were more than a hundred willow trees and a dozen huts nearby:

Cold, I depend on the sun neath the eaves;
hot, I wash my body in the stream.

When the sun comes out I don't get up, but when it sets I'm again asleep. A western breeze fills the villages and lanes; (there are) the clearness and coolness of an autumn day. There are only the sounds of birds and dogs; one doesn't hear the noise of horse and carriage. At times I tilt a jug of wine, while seated and looking towards the mountains in the southeast. My little niece is just learning to walk; she tugs at my clothes and plays before me. One can delight in this, almost as (Confucian disciples) Yen Hui and Yüan Hsien once did."

In his tenth poem, Po extols wine's unsung merits, using a series of classical allusions which I have rendered in paraphrase:¹² "Darkly sparkling, the wine in the cup; it has merit but it doesn't boast. If it doesn't boast, men are unaware (of it), so I'll now speak for it. Good generals approaching a great enemy urge forth troops of a thousand, ten thousand, make wine and food offerings to the river spirits, and go to their deaths with hearts as one. Brave warriors sharpen their short swords stirred with courage and a spirit of anger, but, once drunk, they forget revenge and their limbs seem boneless. The killing of a filial wife in Han times was followed by more than a year of drought, but one libation poured to her spirit brought on rains unending through the night. The prison air of the Ch'in (dynastic capital of) Hsien-yang—such wrongdoing and pain that it produced a demon. For a thousand years it was unwilling to leave, but it vanished through one outpouring of wine. How much more so the lamentations of women and children and other illnesses of solitude and grief! Pleasurable drinking will always disperse these, like frost getting to a spring day. Then I know that the spirit of the liquor-fermenting yeast among the myriad things is unparalleled."

The eleventh poems in the wine theme series of Po Chü-i and T'ao Yüan-ming consider the problem of life and death and reach melancholy conclusions. T'ao notes that the virtuous Confucian disciple Yen Hui still died prematurely, praised by posterity but having had to endure a life of hardship. After death there is no consciousness, argues T'ao, so enjoy life while you can. That the body is worth a thousand gold can only be said of the living and not of the corpse.¹³ Here is how Po comments poetically on the quest for longevity: "Smoke and clouds obstruct the Immortal's dwelling; wind and waves restrict the Immortal's mountain—how could I not wish to go there? The great sea route hinders and is distant. Gods and Immortal—though I have heard talk of them, the spirit herbs can't be sought; those who don't attain long life stay in the world like ephemeral ants. One who has passed on returns not again; why be pained and cherish a hundred griefs? Thinking of this, suddenly my inner organs are warmed; seated, I see that a white hair has been produced. I raise my wine cup and turn to drink alone; looking back to my shadow, I invite it (to join me) in vain. My heart and mouth make a pact: We won't say stop till we're drunk.

If this morn I don't drink to the utmost,
do I know if there will be a tomorrow?

Don't you see beyond the suburb gates pile after pile of grave mounds and hills? The moon's brightness saddens man utterly, worthless weeds blow mournfully in the wind. If the dead had awareness, they'd repent not having lit candles to frolic (while they lived).

Po's next poem is in praise of T'ao Yüan-ming, describing him in these terms:

I've heard that at Hsün-yang Commandery
there was formerly learned Gentleman T'ao.
He loved wine, not fame;
grieved at being sober, not poor.
He was once P'eng-tse magistrate
but only served for eighty days.
He lamented and, suddenly displeased,
hung his seal on office gates.
He hummed his poem of returning home,
on his head a wine-filtered turban.
Officials couldn't get him to stay.
He went right into old mountain clouds.
Returning, under his five willows¹⁴
he again cultivated truth through wine.
Glory and profit among men
fall away like mud and dust.
Already gone a long time,
he left behind writings.
One after another urge me to drink;
besides this, there's nothing said.
Since I've gotten old
I secretly yearn to be as he was;
I can't come up to him in other respects,
So I imitate his intoxicated muddledness.

The thirteenth poems of T'ao and Po deal with the same subject, the different pattern of behavior in two men. One was always drunk, states T'ao, and the other always sober, and they were always together. But somehow to T'ao the straitlaced one seemed stupid and inferior to the drunkard. Po amplifies the theme somewhat, with historical personages cited to make the same point: "The Prince of Ch'u doubted a loyal official and released Ch'u Yüan to Chiang-nan; the Chin dynasty slighted an elevated scholar and abandoned Liu Ling below the forest. One man was constantly drunk and alone, the other constantly sober and alone. The sober one had many unattained ambitions, the drunk one many pleasurable feelings. Pleasurable feelings can be trusted for personal goodness, but what do unattained ambitions finally achieve? (Liu Ling) proudly lay down among the wine jugs while (Ch'u Yüan), emaciated and decayed, walked about the marsh banks:

One worried and the other enjoyed,
the reasons are exceedingly clear!
I hope you'll drink wine.
Think not of posthumous fame.

Po Chü-i was fond of using the storyteller's technique, resorting to fiction to dramatize content and make a more effective general observation from a particular instance. Here is the story he told in the fourteenth poem, probably referring obliquely to personal circumstances: "There was a scholar from the Yen-Chao region, whose words and looks were wondrous and rare; day after day he went to the wine houses, pawning his clothes for a few cupfuls (of wine). I asked, 'How were your spirits thwarted?', and he replied, 'I was begotten in lowly weeds. The land was cold and my fate was bleak; my talents for assisting the sovereign were of no use. How could I be without a plan for saving the age? (But) a good go-between was lacking at His Lordship's gates. I presented proposals time after time but they went unreported; slowly I returned, with empty hands.

"'There was also a classmate of mine who first ascended the ladder to the blue clouds (of high officialdom); the road (we were travelling) was severed by his eminence and my humbleness, and though I knocked on his vermillion gates he failed to open them. When I went back (to my village) I planted crops, but for three years drought caused disaster. I entered the mountains to burn herbs of immortality, but one day they turned to ashes. Stumbling along for more than fifty years, my whole life has been distress unending. Everywhere unable to set forth, I have thus reverted to the midst of wine.'"

The next-to-last poem in Po's series emulating T'ao's poetic style and thought again stresses the meaninglessness of fame:

There is a man of eminence in South Lane,
in a high-topped carriage drawn by four horses.

I ask, "What distresses you so
that at forty your beard is white?"
"You don't know," he replies,
"but high rank means many worries."
There is a poor scholar in North Quarter;
broken jars for windows, ropes for doors.
He goes out supporting a mulberry cane;
he enters to lie in a snail's shed.
He is lowly and useless and without a care,
heart at ease and body comforted.
There is a rich old man in East Neighborhood,
with goods piled up in five cities.
He collects grains and silks in the Eastern Capital,
sells gold and pearls in (Ch'ang-an's) West Market.
He toils by day and plans by night,
day or night lives untranquilly.
There is a poor person in West Cottage,
lowly wife mated to lowly male.
Cotton-clothed, she is hired to beat the rice;
short-garmented, he is hired as a scribe.
Through this they seek food to eat;
once satiated, are overjoyed.
The eminent and humble, the poor and rich:
Though there is a difference in their stations,
worry and joy, profit and loss
are not far from one another.
Thus, in the view of all-persuasive man,
the myriad things are as one.
But we still do not know life and death—
which is victory, which defeat?
Slowly doubting and unknowing,
let's enjoy ourselves with wine.

The last poem in the series describes the arbitrariness of the universe to nature and to man, an arbitrariness which is unfathomable. Drink and be unaffected, the poet seems to say, for life is without discernible rhyme or reason: "The Ch'i River is clear and pure, the Yellow River muddy and yellow. As communication (systems), they are enumerated among the four great rivers; clearness or muddiness does not harm the one or the other. (In the Chou dynasty) the Grand Duke battled in the fields (in support of the Martial Prince), but Po-i (refused to assist the Prince) and starved at Shou-yang (instead). At the same time both were called Worthies and Sages, so advance or withdrawal did not prevent one or the other (from being so honored)."

The poet then poses unanswerable questions: "If you say that Heaven doesn't love the people, why does it bring the grains to life? If you say that Heaven really loves the people, why does it bring jackals and wolves to life? If you say that the gods give blessings to the good, Confucius the Sage after all flurried and bustled (his whole life). If you say that the gods send disaster to the evil, (why did) the tyrannical First Emperor of Ch'in rule over all? What crimes did worthies Yen Hui and Huang Hsien commit that they died so young? The principles of things are unfathomable; the ways of the gods are also hard to figure. I raise my head to look up and question Heaven, but Heaven's color is but a blue-blue."

One should merely
plant more millet,
be drunk all day,
wine goblet in hand.

In a Sung compilation, literatus Huang Shan-ku once commented that while Po Chü-i and Liu Tsung-yüan (773-819) composed poems in imitation of T'ao Yüanming, Liu's compositions were closer to the originals.¹⁵ Wang Li-ming, in considering Huang's statement, opined that Liu Tsung-yüan was close in words but not in spirit, Po Chü-i close in doctrine but not in words. Wang believed, therefore, that each T'ang poet attained one aspect of T'ao's writings.¹⁶

Po Chü-i was demoted in 815 and sent south to Chiang-chou. In 816 he visited T'ao's former residence nearby and composed a preface and poem in remembrance. He explains in the preface that because he admired T'ao as a person he had earlier composed the sixteen poems in imitation (translated above). Chancing to pass by two areas where T'ao had lived when he quit his magistrate's job at forty and retired, Po Chü-i thought of him, visited his former home, and had to write a poem in praise. Po, who was then in his early forties, must have been in low spirits about his bleak prospects. To paraphrase the poem: "The world of dust and dirt," Po remarks, "doesn't blemish jade, and similarly the holy phoenix doesn't partake of offensive-smelling flesh. Ah, Mr. T'ao Quiet and Chaste!¹⁷ Born between the Chin and Sung (dynasties), there was something he truly protected in his heart though he finally was unable to utter what it was. T'ao admired the ancient Sage who concealed himself in the mountains and starved to death rather than serve a ruler he considered improper. Certain ancients were not at all distressed by hunger and poverty because they were single, but T'ao had five sons and with them shared hunger and cold:"

The food in his belly not full,
the clothes on his body not complete.
Often summoned, he didn't arise—
such can be called a true Worthy.

Po states he was born five hundred years (it was actually four hundred years) after T'ao and that every time he read T'ao's autobiography, The Biography of Mr. Five Willows, he was filled with thoughts of him and felt a yearning in his heart. He had already sung of the essence bequeathed by T'ao in sixteen poems; now when he came to visit T'ao's house of old there was a stillness, as if the ancient was before his eyes. Po didn't envy the fact there was wine in T'ao's goblet or that his lute was not strung. (T'ao, not caring for music, carried around a stringless lute; the "wine in the goblet" referred to one of T'ao's poetic lines).¹⁸ But he did envy the way in which T'ao abandoned honor and profit in order to age and die by his hill and garden. Oh, the old village, the old mountain stream where he had lived! Po didn't see the chrysanthemums under the eaves which T'ao had mentioned in one drinking poem, but there was still the mist in the village, the mist which T'ao had poetically described. T'ao's descendants were unknown but his clan still hadn't moved from the locale. Everytime Po met someone with the T'ao surname, he was overcome by a feeling of yearning.

Chapter 5 The Quieter Pleasures

The drinking poems written in emulation of T'ao Yüan-ming differ markedly from the poems of tranquillity and sobriety which dominate that part of Po's poetry collection devoted to the quiet pleasures. The poet evokes a mood of yielding resignation to time and events, coupled with a realization that social action and involvement create traps for the unwary. He expresses this sentiment in poem after poem, seeking to meditate, to identify with Nature, and to lose his consciousness of ego in a world of competition and strife. He wants to surmount the confines of birth, death, and rebirth by mentally transcending the cycle of life and death. He knew a mountain-dweller named Wang who was trying to lengthen his life, but he reminded him that everything was relative, including the duration of the time interval:

I hear you reduce sleep and food,
listen daily to talks of God and Immortals.
You secretly await Adepts extraordinary,
covertly seek longevity's mystery.
Long is long in relation to short—
you can't leave the life death track.
Even if you attain longevity,
it's merely better than dying young.
The pine withers in a thousand years,
the hibiscus perishes in but a day.
Finally both join the void.

Why should one boast about one's years? There is a natural difference between living to be as old as a Methuselah¹ or dying in childhood, but there's no (real) difference between life and death:

It's best to study non-life;
non-life is non-annihilation.

Po Chü-i was almost forty when he clarified in verse what he meant by being at ease: "Body at ease, I forget arms and legs; heart at ease, I forget right and wrong. At ease, I forget ease as well and (attain a state where) I don't know who I am. My limbs are like rotten wood, and I sit upright and unaware. My heart is like dead ashes, and I am silent and unthinking. Today comes and tomorrow follows; heart and body suddenly leave. At thirty-nine, I am in the twilight of my years. (Mencius said that) at forty his heart was immovable,² and now I've almost reached the same level of awareness."

He was pessimistic about life, which to him was unsubstantial and devoid of lasting significance, and he transformed this pessimism into one of his major poetic themes. One night in autumn he and a friend were viewing the bright moon and the early dew. Po was fifty at the time, and he urged his friend to listen to the words of his song about life: "After fifty, man deteriorates; before twenty, he's a fool. Since night and day divide (even the thirty intervening years) in half, how little time there really is! Before birth, one doesn't delight and enjoy, and after death there is an excess of accumulations. But how can one use pearl bed coverlets and jade ornament cases in the yellow springs of the netherworld?"

The poet stressed mind over matter. In 811, while in mourning, he went fishing on the Wei River. The river, the color of glass, held carp and bream. Po usually suspended a bamboo rod into the stream. A slight breeze blew the long fishing line here and there and, though Po sat facing the fish, his heart was in the realm of egolessness. He commented on the story about a white-haired old man of ancient times who also went fishing north of the Wei River. The old man didn't go there to get fish but rather to seek the friendship of the Cultured King of the Chou dynasty. But Po lacked even the old man's motivation, for he was interested in neither man nor fish and wasn't skilled enough to catch either. He was amused by the sparkle of the autumnal waters and, stimulated, returned home and drank wine.

Tipsiness was a subordinate theme in the descriptions of pleasurable experiences, for Po sometimes reached a state which rendered even the wine cup superfluous. As he wrote in one poem: "Newly-bathed limbs extended, I sleep alone with my heart at peace. Moreover, having sat upright till the depths of night, I sleep till the sun is high. The spring coverlet is thin but warm, the room I sleep in secluded and quiet. I forget about the matters of men, and seem to have become a Pillowed Immortal. Utterly at ease, I have dreamless thoughts and I enjoy a harmony difficult to describe. It is indeed better than the drunkenness of T'ao Yüanming,³ and can rival the meditations of a renowned Liang dynasty temple priest (who lived three centuries ago).⁴ What beckons me to awake? The cry of the shrike. When I do, wife and children laugh; life in spring is unbounded."

Po was proud of being lazy and claimed that he was even lazier than Hsi Shu-yeh, a literatus of the Three Kingdoms' State of Wei cited in my translation of the next poem.⁵ "Singing of Indolence" was probably written in 814, when the mourning period for Po's mother came to a close.

Singing of Indolence

There is officialdom but, indolent, I don't choose it;
there are fields but, indolent, I don't till them.
There is a hole in the roof but, indolent, I don't repair it;
my clothes are torn but, indolent, I don't sew them.
There is wine but, indolent, I don't drink it;
it would be the same if the cask had long been empty.
There is a lute but, indolent, I don't play it;
it would be the same if it were stringless.
My family tells me the rice is gone;
I want to cook but, indolent, don't pound the grain.
Relatives and friends send me letters;
I want to read them but am (too) indolent to open the seals.
I have heard of Hsi Shu-yeh,
who spent his life in indolence.
He played the lute and forged iron;
compared to me, he wasn't indolent.

Po Chü-i's "indolence" was a reaction of withdrawal from the harshness of bureaucracy and the vagaries of the human condition. As he once commented: "Yesterday there was wailing at a neighbor's home south of mine; how painful those wailing sounds! They say it's a wife wailing for her husband, twenty-five (when he died). This morning there is wailing at a north ward; they say it's a mother wailing for her child, (deceased) at seventeen. With all the neighborhoods like this, there is much premature death; one realizes that men of this floating world rarely get to be white-haired. I am now past forty and, remembering the early deaths of others, pleased (at still being alive). From now on I won't mind seeing reflected in this bright mirror a snowlike head (of hair)."

There are several poems written between 816 and 818, after the poet left Ch'ang-an to serve in the south, in which he stresses meditation and release: His noon nap in the rear pavilion sufficing, he arises and sits, confronting the evening spring scene. Aware that his eyes are still muddled, unthinking his heart true resides:

Serenely I return to my oneness nature,
emptily quiet leave ten thousand thoughts.

To the poet, there was nothing comparable to this realization:

It is originally the Village of Non-Being,
also called the Place of Non-Usefulness;
practising meditation and sitting forgetfully,
returning together on the same road.

He once spent the day seated under a pine tree, occasionally strolling along the banks of a pond. Strolling or standing, sitting or lying, at heart he was indifferent and inactive:

Unaware of the swift passing of the years,
letting white hairs grow as they may.
If I weren't slighted by the world,
how could I pursue feelings of leisure?

The poet, skilled in self-revelation, sang of his thoughts in another poem: "I often hear the words of Chuangtzu, stating that the clever toil and the wise are grieved and saddened. They are not equal to those of no talent who eat their fill and ramble about for pleasure. Having spent a year at Chiang-chou in the south in demotion, I now approach this doctrine. I don't differentiate things as black or white but immerse myself in and float with time. The morning meal and the evening sleep are the sum of personal planning; apart from these I relax and let go, at times seeking the solitude of mountain and stream. I ramble to a famed Chin dynasty temple site in spring and to an equally famous Chin dynasty terrace in autumn:

I may hum a verse of poetry;
I may drink a bowl of tea.
Heart and body unencumbered,
vast-vast like an empty boat.
Wealth and eminence also have distress,
distress in the heart's peril and grief.
Poverty and humbleness also have pleasure,
pleasure in the body's freedom.

The poet advised himself to conquer adversity by adhering to simplicity and by remembering that all paths high or low led to the grave. He once napped after a meal and on waking rose and drank two bowls of tea. Then he looked up at the sun, about to set:

People in joy regret the quickness of the sun;
people in grief detest the distance of the years.
Those with no joy and no grief
entrust to life, long or short.

Po, who inclined towards Taoism, wrote two poems based on a passage in the Chuang-tzu⁶ on the oneness of things: "The green pines are a hundred feet high," he remarked, "the green orchids but a few inches low. Since both are bora in the great universe, long or short are destined. The long cannot withdraw, the short cannot advance. If one makes use of the principle (of relativity), failure and success are both griefless." He contrasted a long-lived tree cited by Chuang-tzu, which survived eight thousand springs,⁷ with a type of hibiscus whose blossoms failed to last the night. There was among the plants the gradually maturing lone bamboo. Its body aged in three years but it was green throughout the four seasons. It had to cede to Chuang-tzu's long lived tree for age, but it was still superior to the hibiscus.

He needed to live just a little longer in order not to be a ghost by the age of fifty. He knew his destiny and was satisfied; he entrusted to fate and was at peace with himself. Therefore, though he had known days of failure and withdrawal, his face showed no grief. He formerly served in a period of worldly honor. Now he no longer planned to exert physical effort but rather to elevate his heart and purify his aspirations. Failure and success did not depend on oneself; pleasure and distress did not depend on Heaven. Heaven's mandate was something one could do nothing about, but one could get one's heart to be at peace. One should strive to be self-reliant, and it was not difficult to look inward:

Don't question Heaven's mandate;
Heaven is high and hard to talk with.

Po returned to the theme of man and fate in two poems which he entitled "Arriving at Principles":"What thing is robust and does not age? When is there failure and not (later) success? This is like music and regulation being transposed into the first of the five musical notes:

My fate alone is so hapless!
Much sadness and little splendor.
In the vigorous years prematurely deteriorated;
brief tranquillity, and return to long impoverishment.
There is nothing I can do about fate;
I entrust to the Natural and await my end.
My fate can't do anything about me;
my heart is like emptiness and void.

Befuddled, he was one with transformation; confused, he was one with the world. Did one who could sit amidst distress have to be hurt by it? The implication of the concluding lines is that one who frees his heart from striving is emancipated from the cycle of failure and distress.

The second poem about arriving at principles cites miracles described in revered ancient works: One ancient's daughter changed into a stream; a certain man sickened and on the seventh day of his sickness turned into a tiger. A willow was produced from someone's left elbow, a man changed into a woman. The classics-oriented Po Chü-i cited miracles as if they were precise truths and went on to say they showed how birds, beasts, water, and wood differed from man. They produced changes and did not await death to revert to earth. Then he referred to the human cycle:

All my bones are my own,
but I still can't master them.
How much more so, other times and fates!
What's the sense of counting blessings and disasters?
When the time comes, one can't hold back;
when life goes, how can one arrest it?
One should only cultivate boundlessness.
I have heard the words of the all-pervasive ones.

In 822, when Po was riding to Hangchow to become governor, he dozed on his horse and on waking composed the following poem:

A long journey—started for some time;
the forward residence still not reached.
My body is tired, my eyes befuddled—
tired and napping, I finally doze off.
My right sleeve still dangles a whip,
my left hand gradually relaxes the reins.
Suddenly I wake and ask my servant:
We've only travelled a hundred paces.
The division between body and spirit
is in this time distinction;
time specified on horseback
but events unlimited in dreams.
How true! Words of the all-pervasive ones—
a hundred years is the same as a single sleep.

The poet sang of butterflies and flowers, to reinforce his thesis about the futility of competition. The crane of longevity remained aloof in the lofty pine, away from the disturbing noise and bustle of contention:

Autumn blossoms—purple flourishing;
autumn butterflies—yellow scattering.
Under the flowers, butterflies new and small
fly and play, flocking east and west.
Day and night a cool wind comes;
confused-disorderly, flowers fall in clusters.
The night is deep, the white dew cold;
butterflies have died among the clusters.
Born by day, to die together by night;
each follows its own order of species.
Don't you see the thousand-year cranes,
mostly nesting in the hundred-foot pines?

He wrote another poem about nature in a different mood, praising the mountain pheasant which lived unfettered and in natural harmony. Better it is, he seems to say, to be poor and free than to be well fed but marked for slaughter in the world of master and mastered: "Five paces, a mouthful of grass; ten paces, a drink of water. The mountain pheasant follows life in accord with its nature. Above the rafters (of the bridge nearby) there is neither net nor arrow, and below there is neither kite nor hawk. (That is why) cocks, hens, and fledglings get to finish the years (allotted to them by) Heaven. Alas! There is the chicken under the eaves and the goose within the pond. Since they receive the favor of rice and grains (from their owners), they inevitably have the worry of being sacrificed."

Even on becoming governor of Hangchow, Po indicated in verse that his philosophy was unaffected and that he still tried to see into the spirit rather than the outer frame. In singing of his feelings, he mentioned that formerly he was an official in the Secretariat at Ch'ang-an, while now he was governor of Hangchow (referred to literally as "two thousand piculs", which was a governor's annual rice allowance). Comparing the two periods of official service, he felt that the past was inferior to the present, but others said the opposite:

In the past, though I lived in proximity to the throne,
all day many were the worries and cares.
There were poems I dared not sing,
there was wine I dared not drink.
Now though I live far away,
to the year's end I am unencumbered by service.
I eat my fill, sit all day,
sing long songs, am drunk all night.
Human life is within a hundred years;
it speeds by like a passing rift.
Strive first for a body tranquil and at ease;
next wish for the heart to enjoy pleasure.
Getting things is a loss,
but losing things is a gain.
Therefore, men who see the Way
see the heart and don't see traces.

Chinese tradition placed a limit of a hundred years on human existence and throughout the centuries used "a hundred years" as an expression synonymous with life. There are many references to this phrase to be found in literary works from the Han dynasty onwards.⁸

There are series of poems in this section, written from 805 to 823 (with a gap from 819 to 821), in which the poet indicates what he enjoyed. The pleasures he writes about are pleasures of the mind. He looked for quiet circumstances and scenic elegance. When confined by busy office routine in Ch'ang-an, he sought to escape mentally from the restriction of city surroundings by visualising mountain scenes and temple stillness. There were many temples and monasteries in Ch'ang-an, and he once stayed in one of them in the bothersome heat of midsummer. It was a day of lonely wind and rain, and at night cicadas cried. The Ward of Auspiciousness Everlasting (just east of the imperial city) was still, Hua-yang Monastery was in solitude. No horses or carriages reached here, and cassia blooms of autumn portent filled the earth. Time passed and worldly things were distant. Why did one have to wait for deterioration and old age to first become aware of buoyancy and rest? How long distant true seclusion was! The way of completeness was attainable through closed eyes: "Though my body is in the world, my heart wanders with the empty none. Morn hungry, there is a simple meal; night cold, there is a cloth coverlet. Luckily, I avoid cold and starvation; besides this, what is there to seek? Having few desires, even with small ills I enjoy Heaven's (way) and my heart doesn't grieve. How do I clarify my intentions? With a copy of the Book of Changes at the head of my bed." (The Book of Changes was an ancient guide for telling one's fortune.)

Po Chü-i was a student par excellence. Early one morning in 805, when he was thirty-three, he said farewell to friends scheduled to take additional official examinations. Here is how he describes the scene: "Early in the morning I ride in my carriage to send off the Elevated Persons; the east has still not lightened. 'I have gotten up too early,' I say to myself, but already there are horses and carriages about. The torches of cavalrymen cast shadows high and low; street drums (announcing the dawn) can be heard far and near. The pitiable early morning (test candidates) look at one another and their spirits rise:

The dust flies when the sun comes out;
everyone is active scheme-scheming;
scheme-scheming, what do they seek?
Nothing else but profit and fame.

But I often get up late and live emptily in Ch'ang-an City. Spring is in its depths and my official term of service has been fulfilled; daily I have that return-tothe-mountains feeling."

In 807 he received a few days of sick leave and went to South Pavilion. While enjoying the view from its heights, he composed the following: "Inclining on my pillow and not seeing things, the bolt of my gate has been closed for two days. I first realize that the body of an official doesn't get any rest till he gets sick. My pleasurable intent is not in the remote, but in a small pavilion ten-feet square. Above the bamboo tops by the western eaves I sit looking at T'ai-po Mountain, and feel ashamed that the clouds above the distant peaks confront this face of mine in the realm of dust." (There were many mountains called T'ai-po, but the mountain Po Chü-i refers to here could be seen from Ch'ang-an.)

He spent a night alone at the Temple to Which Immortals Wander: "A sand crane ascends the steps (of the pond) and stands; moon reflecting on the water's edge, I open the gates. These hold me here for lodging, and for two nights I cannot go back. Fortunate in meeting with a quiet scene, I rejoice in not having companions with me to urge me to return. Since I have had this lone excursion, I do not propose to come (here) with others any longer."

He described an autumn scene in his front courtyard:

Dew falls on bamboo mats, color like jade;
wind on screens, shadows like waves.
Sitting in melancholy, tree leaves fall.
Central courtyard bright-moon filled.

Po enjoyed reading the poetry of contemporaries and earlier poets, and he described this enjoyment in a poem. He was seated in a small official pavilion, leisurely looking outward: "Windblown bamboos scatter echoes of purity, and smoke-trailing cassias affix their green figures. The sun is high, people and officials have left, and I sit tranquilly in a thatched hut. With coarse clothes I ward off heat, with simple food I appease morning hunger. I trust in these to satisfy myself and mentally and physically do little. When my lone singing above the pavilion stops, there is nothing before my eyes. The snow on T'ai-po Mountain peaks, a volume of T'ao Yüan-ming's poems. People like different things and this is what I like. To be sure, those who crave fame will laugh at me, but I'll willingly let them.

Wu-t'ung tree by the well, cool leaves move.
The neighbor's pestle, autumn sounds starting.
Alone I sleep beneath the eaves,
feeling half my bed moon-occupied.

He derived quiet pleasure from seeing and communing with nature, and wrote about the sounds of the pines: "Fine moon, I like to sit alone, twin pines before the balustrade. A slight wind comes from the southwest to enter secretly the branches and leaves. Before the bright moon in the depths of night, lonely and desolate are the sounds emitted (by the pines), (like) the soughing of rain on a cold mountain or the cold notes of a lute in autumn. Hearing it once, the fierce heat is washed away; hearing it twice, muddled care is broken through. I don't sleep all night (because of it) and my mind and body are clarified. Horses and carriages move from the street to the south, songs and music resound from my neighbors to the west, but who is aware that under the eaves no noise fills my ears?" Even while on duty in the palace, he was pleased by quietude:

Gates majestic, ninefold of silence.
Windows forlorn, a roomful of tranquillity.
It seems like a place to rectify one's heart;
why must one be in the deep mountains?

We are able to achieve a state of "have-not" tranquillity, needing little and wanting less: "Few guests before the gates, many pines and bamboos neath the steps. Autumn scene descends the west wall and a cool breeze:

There is a lute but, indolent, I don't play,
there are books but, tranquil, I don't read.
In my heart throughout the day
tranquillity and non-desire.

The poet then asks himself: "Why must one have extensive quarters? I don't need many accumulations. A ten-foot hut can accomodate my body, a peck of stored grain can fill my stomach. Moreover, I lack the art of ruling and, doing nothing, receive official rewards. I don't plant a single mulberry tree or hoe a single crop, but all day I am filled with food to eat and all year I am abundantly clothed. Aware of my heart of shame, it is naturally easy for me to be satisfied…." The poet during his struggles with bureaucracy was pursued by these thoughts of withdrawal, longing for rusticity: "If the iron is soft, it doesn't become a sword; if the wood is crooked, it doesn't become a carriage. I am now like these, dull-stupid, not getting (even) to the gates. I willingly turn away from profit and fame, obliterate my traces, and revert to the hills. I sit and lie in a thatched hut, facing lute and wine goblet. My body leaves the world of complexity and care, my ears deny the din of the market place. Blissful and non-doing, I read the five thousand words (of Lao-tzu), on a griefless and joyful plane, with few desires and a cleansed heart."

Once while working in the palace, Po dreamed of visiting the Temple to Which Immortals Frolic: "By the western balustrade I have drafted the edict and am free; the pines and bamboos are deep and still. The moon appears and a clean breeze comes. Of a sudden it resembles a night in the mountains. I then have a dream of (the mountain) to the southwest and in the dream become a guest of frolicking Immortals:

When I wake and hear the palace water clock,
I still say it's the dripping of the mountain stream.

He was a mountain-climbing enthusiast: "Long sick and remiss in appreciation in the heart; this morning I climb the mountain. The mountain is autumnal and the touch of clouds is cold; these accord with my clear and emaciated features. I lie and can be pillowed on white rocks, stroll and can climb on green grasses. In my mind it is as if I've obtained, and all day I don't want to return:

Human life is but an instant,
life sent twixt Heaven and Earth.
The heart has a thousand years of grief,
the body lacks a simple day of leisure.
When can I release this Web of Dust?
Coming here, I'll close the gates behind.

The lute, one of the companions of the Chinese literatus, also afforded joy to Po Chü-i, the joy of music clear and controlled which blended with a meditative mood. The lute was a respected musical instrument, considered representative of the music of the ancients, and lute-playing was considered one way to enlightenment.⁹ Po described in verse the joy of playing the lute on a clear night:

The moon appears, the nest is birdless;
I sit in solitude in an empty forest.
This time my heart's bounds are tranquil,
and I can play the plain wood lute.
Cool, clear sounds come from the wood nature,
whose peacefulness accords with the human heart.
The heart heaps up harmonious vapors,
the wood responds with old orthodox sound.
Echoes from the movement of things are at rest;
the song ends—autumn night is deep.
I feel the origin of orthodox sound,
Heaven and Earth pure, deep profound.

While in mourning at Wei Village from 811 to 814, the poet recaptured and redefined the mood of the recluse. He expressed his feelings poetically soon after arrival, saying: "The lodging heart is in the body and the lodging nature is in the heart. This body is an external thing; how can it be worth paining with grief and love? There are, moreover, leftover adornments, embellished hairpins, and lofty carriage covers. (But) these are removed from the body, externals added to externals. How worried in accumulating them, how saddened by losing them! One then knows that name and fame are injurious, whether gained or lost. The scholar who lives in poverty and utter ease has the fragrant grasses for his turban and sash. Since I have secured this Way, my body is impoverished but my mind peaceful."

It was also at Wei Village in 811 that he described quiet living:

Stomach empty—one bowl of rice;
starved for food—there's an excess of taste.
Lying half a day under south eaves,
warmly reclining, I went to sleep.
A cotton robe covered two knees,
a bamboo armrest supported twin wrists.
From dawn right to dusk
mind and body at one in non-happenings.
Heart satisfied is then wealthy,
body quiet then equals eminence.
Wealth and eminence being in this,
why must one occupy high position?
Look at Minister P'ei:
His gold-printed damasks illumined the ground,
but his heart was distressed daily
and he died at only forty-four.
Then one realizes riders in lofty carriages
are there mostly in worry and fear.

Po, who was keenly aware of aging, asserted in his late thirties and early forties that he felt the onset of age and had no worldly ambitions. The pleasures of temple dwelling remained a preferred poetic topic, and in 812 he wrote: "Famous official—I'm aging, (too) indolent to seek (to be one), so I retire and take my body's ease in the fields. Home and gardens—I'm sick and (too) lazy to return, so I dwell in a monastery.¹⁰ Rustic clothes in exchange for official garments, a goosefoot (cane) in place of horse and carriage:

In my goings and stoppings I'm free,
and feel utterly unencumbered in body;
at dawn; I frolic above a southern mound,
at night I rest under an eastern retreat.
The thousand, ten thousand human world things
do not concern my heart at all.

Po had none of the intellectual's disdain for the untutored peasant. On the contrary, he was drawn to the scene of the toilers in the fields and felt compassion for their labor and its meager rewards. He returns in poem after poem to the theme of self-shame, saying he consumes but doesn't produce. He anticipated the views of the Communists in China more than a millenium later, who were to insist that intellectuals spend time working in the countryside along-side the peasants. Here is how the poet described an autumn harvest: "The labors of the world do not attract me; I am usually happy and tranquil. Nights, I go to look at the fields and quietly walk alongside village hamlets. The harvest is piled in the fields, flocks of sparrows chirp in flight. How can the year's bounties be only for man? The sounds of birds and beasts are also joyous.

"An old man of the fields meets me and is pleased; he silently gets up and arranges the wine cups. Hands reverently drawn in sleeves, he invites me to partake of wine remaining from the autumn sacrifices. Embarrassed by his diligence and reverence, my goosefoot walking stick is tarried-calmed. His words and actions are natural and truthful and I am unaware of (any) evils of farmers. I stop drinking to ask him about ordinary things; he tills the field and his wife and children harvest. Their muscular vigors are harassed by toil, their clothing and food are often simple and poor:

I feel ashamed that salaried officials
never toil in the fields.
Filling themselves without toiling;
how does this differ from the man of Wei's cranes?

The last line refers to a story in the Tso-chuan (Tso's comments on the Spring and Autumn Annals attributed to Confucius). Towards the close of the second year of Duke Min's reign, a certain marquis was so fond of cranes that he had them carried around in official carriages. This wasteful extravagance made such an adverse impression that when the time came to repulse invasion, everyone said that the cranes should fight the enemy instead of the people.¹¹

In 815 Po Chü-i inscribed a poem on a wall of the Temple of Jade Springs:

Placid-placid, the color of jade springs;
far-far, the bodies of floating clouds.
Heart at ease, I face the settled waters.
Clear and clean, we both lack worldly dust.
In my hand grasping a green bamboo cane,
on my head wearing a white silk turban.
Having enjoyed myself fully, I descend the mountain,
not even knowing who I am.

He once withdrew from court on an autumn day and amused himself south of Ch'ang-an. The poem he wrote about this experience is the last in the series of pleasure poems composed prior to his demotion in 815 to marshal of Chiang-chou: "Withdrawing from court, my horse is not yet fatigued; early autumn, the days are still long. I turn the reins and go south of the city, the fields in the suburbs just then clean and cool. Water and bamboo straddle the paths, which wind through hills and streams. Looking up, I see the evening color of the mountains; looking down, I enjoy the illumination from the autumn springs. Tying up my horse by the green pines, the white rocks become my bed. The hairpins of officialdom which usually encumber me are on this day forgotten, as is my body. At dawn, I line up in official rank like phoenix and egret; at night I play alongside seagull and crane. The heart of deceit is thus extinguished, and neither (as official nor as recluse) do I go astray. Who can know my heart and its traces? It is neither journeying nor withdrawn."

After the poet reached Chiang-chou, he had a small pond built by his official quarters: "Beneath the eaves I open a small pond; water fills it to overflow. White sand is spread along the bottom, green stones piled up in the four corners. Don't say it's not deep and wide, but consider that it pleases the solitary man. The water ripples from a slight rain at morn, looks pure under the bright moon at eve. How it lacks the great river's waters, with whiteness of waves extending to the Heavens! (But even an ocean) can't compare with this ten-foot square pond, little more than a foot in depth. Pure and shallow—(in play) one can drag one's hands in it, and all troubles and vexations can be washed away:

What I love the best is dawn and dusk,
when it's a flake of jade of an autumn day.

He mentioned a Taoist monastery where he took lodging, bringing to life inanimate objects of nature: "White clouds are still stationed on the cliff and red leaves in the forest scatter for the first time. The autumn light induces me to stroll leisurely, and I don't know if I have journeyed near or far. At night I lodge in a Taoist monastery and, on lying down, sense that my common-dust heart is extinguished. Fame and profit my heart has forgotten, and the dream of Ch'ang-an is also at an end. If things are like this after coming here for the moment, how much more so if I spend a life in concealment! How shall I control the evening hunger? With a spoonful of the Immortal's flour called 'mother-of-the-clouds'."¹²

His free time as the Chiang-chou governor's nominal assistant in 816 is briefly referred to in a poem entitled "A Pact With My Heart" ("green robes" refers to his official dress):

Black locks—white hairs invade;
green robes—common dust eddies.
Steady unmoving and swift soaring,
at Chiang City I ascend to assistant.
Mornings, I go to my lofty study,
harmoniously basking, lying in the sun;
nights, I go down before my small pond
and tranquilly sit facing the water.
I've already made a pact with body and heart
always to pass my days as I did today.

It was early spring in Chiang-chou, and the poet was alone:

The snow thaws and the ice also melts,
the scene harmonizes and the wind again warms;
courtyard and fields are moist filled,
tiny buds sprout at the base of the wall.
My official residence—quiet without incident;
the sun slopes westward, covering my door.

If I don't read Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu,
with whom can I wish to talk?

He was entranced by the first warmth of spring and, approaching his middle forties, reflected on the spring of youth and the spring of now: "From where has spring's warmth come? A slight harmony arises in the blood. My breath and bones are exhilarated, and I sleep confusedly by the eastern window. It is the last day of the first lunar month; I am free, with no official business. Sleeping deeply, I can't put a stop to it, and sleep from noon to two in the afternoon. Thinking far back to the days of youth and health, (when) I slept quickly and was often joyous:

But once deterioration and illness set in,
this kind of flavor the pillow lacks.

No pleasure derived from contemplation of or absorption in nature was too slight to escape Po Chü-i. Here he describes the delights of eating the bamboo shoots abounding in Chiang-chou, saying that in this regard the southern prefecture excelled either Ch'ang-an or Loyang:

The area being Bamboo Hamlet,
spring shoots fill mountains and valleys.
Mountain peasants break them off, carry bundlefuls,
carry them early into the city for sale.
Things which are numerous being cheap,
for two cash one can buy a bundle,
I place them in a rice steamer,
cooking them together with the rice.
The purple bark is peeled off (like) old silk,
the white flesh broken open (like) new jade.
I then add it daily to my food,
for ten days don't think of meat.
I have been long a guest of Ch'ang-an and Loyang,
where this taste was often insufficient;
now I eat them without indecision.
The southern breeze blows and makes bamboo.

The appeal of food to the starved is described by Po Chü-i in another poem about the simple joys: "Reclining yesterday without supper, today I rise and am morning-starved. What is there in my poor kitchen? I cook rice and steam (the vegetable called) autumn mallow. The red rice grains are fragrant and soft, the green leaves (of the mallow) glistening and fat. When starvation comes, it is stopped by filling up; but after filling up what thoughts are there? I remember days past when I met with glory; now it is the time of impoverishment and withdrawal. Now I don't suffer hunger and cold; in the past I also had no excess of resources (but enough to provide the bare necessities). My mouth has food undiminished, my body has clothing undiminished. I comfort my heart and secretly ask myself, 'What is glory or decline? Don't study the feelings of ordinary men, for they make distinctions of right and wrong'." (The poet implies his contemporaries erred in contrasting glory and right with decline and wrong.)

During his Chiang-chou tour, a small pond near a pavilion comforted him:

At noon, wearied by the heat in my front study,
at night, loving the purity of a small pond.
When the forest-reflected remnant sun goes down,
a tiny coolness arises near its waters.
Seated, I hold my fan of rushes and palms,
idly humming two or three poems.

At forty-five, Po wrote about closing his gates to the world and described a child of his about to talk: "My heart has long forgotten the world; the world also is not involved with me. For me it is therefore a matter of nothingness and that is why my gates long are closed. How long have my gates been closed? Without realizing it, two or three years. My writings already overflow the bookcases, and a child has been born who is about able to speak:

I first realize that the body easily ages;
am saddened anew by the many hardships in the world.
Looking at those who flurry about with the times,
they toil-toil in the dusty realm.
At the end of their years what do they get?
It is better to be tranquil and at leisure.

The 817-18 period was marked by rebellion and civil disorder. Po refers in verse to the troop movements and makes it clear that he prefers not to be involved in military planning. The poem was written from a lofty terrace overlooking the river: "A hundred-foot terrace along the river bank, before the terrace a thousand-li road.¹³ I depend on its height to look over the plain—it suffices to soothe my feelings. On the station road, travel unending, defending the grasslike passes. In coming here, oh a day of such busyness, I particularly feel how good it is to be a man of leisure. My years are past those of 'not being deluded' (a reference to Po's being past forty, since Confucius was quoted as having said that when he was forty, he was not deluded.) For me to withdraw in retirement is really not early. Henceforth, I shall brush the dust (of the world) from my clothes and return to the mountains not yet old."

Po compares his sense of isolation and of lateness in rearing a family with the dilemma of the sparrow who builds a nest for its young when it is too late in the season, when it should be returning southward with the other birds: "All the birds have finished producing young but autumn swallow alone stumble-slips. The fifth day of autumn already nears, (when it should fly south with the rest). What is its intent in holding mud in its mouth (to build a nest for the young)? Unaware that time and season are late, it vainly uses its labors to excess. Things in the world of man are also like this. It is not only the swallow that makes a nest (too late and in vain)."

From 819 to 821 there is a three-year hiatus in the poetic record of quiet pleasures. In a poem written in 822 Po Chü-i asserted that he had forgotten the scenic splendors which enhanced court and palace. However, he still remembered the simple and unpretentious bamboo which grew before his window when he was serving at Hsin-ch'ang, a district in Chekiang:

I don't recall the pines of West Office,
I don't recall the chrysanthemums of South Palace;—
I only recall the courtyard at Hsin-ch'ang,
the bamboos sough-soughing by north window.
By the window, pillow and bamboo mat—
who lodged there after me?

The plight of a withered mulberry tree is likened to the plight of a man consumed by anxiety:

An old withered tree by the road—
it got withered but not in one morning.
Its bark is yellow, externally it is still alive,
but its heart is black, its innards first got scorched.
It is like the people who worry a great deal,
not because a fire is burning outside
(but because they are on fire within).

In 823 Po wrote poetically about his life in Hangchow as governor, comparing it to his past life at Ch'ang-an: "Vast-vast the tides are level for the first time, mild-mild the spring sun arrives. Distant rivers and mountains, empty vast; clear and bright the good weather from Heaven. Beyond, there are things to accord with one's feelings and nothing within to encumber the heart. Several songs are sung to the bamboos, a wine cup drunk as I look towards the clouds. I stroll along, supporting myself with a cane, lie down, read, and take my sleep. Long cultivating a sick frame, I am deeply versed in the flavor of leisure. My distant thoughts of the capital, where there is confused-disturbed flurrying for fame and profit. This morning is an odd-numbered day and for court visits there will be many horses and carriages. (On the odd-numbered days the Emperor held court.) Those in favor guard against the censure of others, those in power cherish worries and fears. Those who are rewarded with riding in lofty carriages do not, I fear, have true wealth and eminence."

Chapter 6 On Friends and Friendship

Po Chü-i shared with his friends the quest for quiet pleasure removed from strife. They would exchange visits, go on excursions to temples and famous scenic sites, and correspond in verse. He and his friends shared the enthusiasm of Ch'ang-an's residents for flower viewing, usually at famous temples and monasteries which were known for the beauty of their peonies or of their peach, lotus, and apricot blossoms. There were many strolling groups and couples, and the botanical diversity of the Serpentine made it suitable for pleasure strolls in any of the four seasons. In his poems, Po urged friends to stay the night with him in quiet surroundings, and when this couldn't be done he sang of his heartfelt disappointment and sadness. His intellectual and emotional involvements were with fellow scholars and poets, and the outpouring of emotion for Yüan Chen, Liu Yü-hsi, and other men was a dominant theme in the intimate dialogues which concerned and moved him.

The first poem in the section on quiet pleasures was sent in the spring of 803 to eight friends, among them Yüan Chen, after they had passed official exams. Po was then working as a library collator and living in northeast Ch'ang-an, near the imperial palace area.¹ This first of his many poems written to friends about enjoyments shared include human interest comments on living conditions. Wrote the poet: "The imperial capital is a fame-and-profit place; after the cock crows there's no quiet living. There is only the lazy one, who still hasn't combed his hair when the sun is high. Skill and clumsiness differ in nature, as do clues to advancement and withdrawal. Fortunately, I have encountered an age of peace and a Son of Heaven² who likes literary scholars. Since I have little talent, it is hard to use me in a high (capacity) so I am (just) a collator in the library. I enter there twenty out of thirty days a month, and therefore am able to cultivate my foolish and heedless person. I have a four- or five-room thatched hut, one horse, and two servants; a (monthly) salary of 16,000 cash gives me a monthly surplus.

"I don't have the encumbrances of (worrying about) my daily livelihood and am little involved in bothersome human events. That is why my youthful heart is always tranquil. Don't say that I have no friends, for I have active acquaintances and quiet ones. There are seven or eight in the library with whom I go out. When we have been prevented from chatting and laughing together for a ten-day period, I look for their carriages day and night. Who can (take a rest from) collation duties to unloosen his sash and recline in my hut? There are bamboos playing before my window and a wine seller outside my gates. How can I wait on you gentlemen? With a few bamboos and a jug of wine."

He wrote the next poem in this collection to his friend Yüan Tsüng-chien, an elder cousin of Yüan Chen's who died in 803. He was responding to one of Yüan's poems about a stroll they had taken to the Serpentine, a stream in beautiful surroundings located in extreme southeast Ch'ang-an. This poem to Yüan Tsung-chien, typical of the way in which Po Chü-i responds to poems by contemporaries, recalls a trip they had once made: "There are thousands and ten thousands in Ch'ang-an, all busily leaving their gates on respective endeavors. Only you and I trusted to our horses to go far along. When we got to the head of the Serpentine, the late sun's reflection was bright on grass and trees. South Mountain had a fine look and this sick journeyer felt mental lucidity. The water birds fluttered white feathers and the lotuses bent stalks before the breeze. Why did we have to go (like) Mencius³ to the River of the Vagabond to wash our turban tassels, since we could do it here?

"That fine scene won't come twice; it will be hard to again enjoy such things together. I sit in melancholy in the red dust; the evening drum has a rat-a-tat sound. Passing one night after the return, mundane thoughts again gradually arose (in me). But when I heard your beautiful jade song (in verse), I was able to recleanse myself of the dust on my garments."

Moon-viewing was one of Po's favorite pastimes. In the summer of 803 the thirty-one-year-old poet went together with other collators to enjoy the sight of the moon at K'ai-yüan Monastery and to spend the night there. Here is how he described the scene: "A few friends and I have our names written in the official registers at the capital, but our posts are insignificant, with no responsibilities of note, and we've more liesure than if we were visitors. Deep-deep within the Taoist monastery is where the expectation for my heart's enjoyment resides. Getting to the gate, we turn back our horses and carriages and enter the monastery courtyard with turbans and canes. It is the start of the pure and harmonious (fourth lunar) month, and the trees are just now resplendent with blossoms. The wind is pure and the new leaves are shadowed by it; the birds yearn after the remaining blossoms on the branches. Towards evening the heavens clear; haze unveils from the southeast.

"We arrange wine below the western corridor and await the moon, leisurely lining up the wine cups. In a little while its golden spirit arrives, as if it has a date with us. The moon glow is resplendent, and once it sheds its radiance the different heights of a complex of buildings are revealed:

Before the pure scene, through the night
we laugh, sing, and know no fatigue.
In Ch'ang-an, fame-and-profit place,
how many know these pleasures?

Po became an administrator at Chou-chih District in 806 and invited his friend Wang Chih-fu to visit him. "Lament Everlasting" was written that year at Wang's suggestion:

You have washed your feet (of the world),
a guest of clouds and rivers;
I must bend my waist,
hairpin and official scepter adorned.
Our footsteps contrast tumult and quiet;
a few miles apart, but long the days.
If you suddenly go on a pleasure journey,
don't regret you are visiting noise and dust;
I have especially planted bamboos before the window,
and they will be your hosts.

Mountain-viewing with Wang Chih-fu one other time was commemorated with a six-line, three-rhyme verse. He also responded in kind to the poem of a friend about their once viewing an old grass chapel in the mountains. Po described the chapel as being removed from the dusty world, amidst scenic splendors. It was glorious to wear embroidered silks and imposing to uphold official duties, but his pleasure was not in these society-markers: "I look in vain towards the skies of that grass chapel." Po wrote poetry to and harmonized poems with fellow-official Ch'ien Hui (755-829); the first poem describes how they shared lodgings one winter's night inside the palace:

Night deep—the memorial draft finished;
mist and moon intense piercing cold.
About to lie down, I warm the remnant last of the wine;
we face before the lamp and drink.
Drawing up the green silk coverlets,
placing our pillows side by side;
like spending more than a hundred nights,
to sleep together with you here.

He wrote a poem in response to one shown him by Ch'ien Hui, in which his friend described how the palace looked at dawn. Po used the occasion to comment on how he felt, hemmed in by bureaucracy:

The window whitens—a star galaxy;
the window warms—remnant of lamp light.
Seated, you roll up the coverlet of red,
watch me seal the purplish-inked writing.⁴
Far-far water clock leaks away,

rise-rise rose-ray scene.
The towered terrace—red glow illuminates
pines and bamboos in green luxuriance.
You love this season's fineness,
turn and say especially to me,
"I didn't know the pure realm of majesty
in dawn scene was so incomparable."

Po was close to a censor named Hsiao in mood and emotion, and he lamented Hsiao's absence from the palace one summer night as he slept alone: "Your Censorate is a place for legal matters, my Hanlin Academy an office for clear petitions. (You are like) a hawk majestically seeking a bird of the fields, (I am like) a swift steed in goodness seeking the mountains. Though we differ in our searches, we both revert to what is unsuitable. This is why in our hearts we're lost and secretly think of one another. Going to sleep alone on a summer's day, the day is long—what to do? Placid in mind and without reflection, my teacher is emptiness and quietude. My outer form has the encumbrance of events, but my heart has an appointment with eventlessness. Once there's an in-heart expansion, external trouble seems left behind. My rank is eminent but I am personally oblivious; intent on quiet, the realm comes as a consequence. I face pine and bamboo as I do when in the mountains. How can these thoughts not be for you? Most of the others would never understand."

Po wrote a poem to his Taoist friend Wu Tan (744-825), admiring the way in which Wu had resigned an important post near the throne: "Clever ones are forceful in painful labors, wise ones mindful of painful griefs. You, my beloved sir, lack cleverness and wisdom; throughout the year you are quiet, remote. You once ascended to the Censorate and assisted the nobles of the east. Drafting memoranda by hand to reprove human transgressions, your heart met with the fortunes of complete victory. The way of officialdom is like wind and waves, but your heart was like an empty boat.⁵ Drifting along and not possessing, gaining freedom from (the unpredictability of) advance and withdrawal. Now you have come to doff the hat trimmed with sable, though at times you attend at the Dragon Palace.⁶ Your official functions match your heart's quiescence, and your dwelling accords with solitude's traces. In winter you are sustained by the sun of the southern eaves, your limbs warm and soft in the extreme; in summer you lie in the breeze of the northern window, pillow and mat like cool autumn. South Mountain enters below your cottage, the wine jug is at the head of your bed. There are areas of quietude in the human realm; why must one be concealed by forest and hill? Looking at myself, I am stupid and dim, stirring all my life and utterly unrested. My once having entered the golden (Hanlin Academy), gates, stars, and mist have made three or four (yearly) revolutions. His Lordship's favor and trust are hard to repay; for long I have merely stayed close by. In the end I should request an idle post, withdraw, and go frolicking with you.

Lying alone in the palace, Po described the scene and thought of Diarist Wang:⁷

Slow-slow drips away the palace water clock,
anxious-anxious cries the darkness crow.
Cassia flowers fell in last night's rain;
slight coolness as I lay by northern eaves.
Dawn, remnants of lamps not yet extinguished,
the screen quietly turning over, (shaken by) wind.
Everytime I secure a quiet circumstance,
I think of talking with my old friend.

In a longer poem written to Li Chien (764-821), a Confucian vegetarian, he recalled a visit to Li's home: "External matters bother my body and external things bequile my emotions. Long after parting from Mr. Li, pettiness and stinginess arise within me. I recall that when I visited you I would dismount and knock on the brushwood and thorn (gates of your poor home). Sometimes you hadn't gotten up yet; your children would happily precede you in welcome. (Or) they would stand alongside you and laughingly appear at the gates, you with clothes turned about or hat awry. Sweeping the steps, there were the green patterns of the moss; brushing the porch, there was the pureness of the wistaria's shade. The homemade wine warmed with the coming of spring, the garden vegetables, cooked with the dew. We looked to the mountains, seated at the east pavilion, awaited the moon, and strolled by the southern plain. There was quiet at the gate, with only the talk of birds; the market was distant and (hour-announcing) drum sounds few. We faced one another and talked the whole day, never about profit and fame. We separated, but when will we come together? The bright moon has already been full three or four times. When we parted, the remaining flowers fell, but by now new cicadas cry. Spring's fragrance is suddenly waning, and the remorse in my heart at parting is still unpacified. How can I not think of ordering my carriage? But official duties bind me to my seat. You formerly made a promise to visit me and come to the mountain city (with me). My heart of appreciation has long been blocked; promised words should not be disregarded. Fortunately, we are not distantly separated, a one-day journey on horse."

Po wrote a poem of praise to Yüan Tzu, a Minister on the Right who was governing Hua Prefecture in 805 when Po made a trip there.⁸ The poem gives us an idea of Po's concept of the good official. This was an infrequent poetic theme up to this time (the year 805), when he was thirty-three, and perhaps he was deliberately trying to flatter an important superior in the hierarchy. He refers to him in the last line of the poem as "Duke Yüan": "Wei River green full-full; Hua Mountains blue-green, lofty-aloft. How beautiful these mountains and rivers! And you are right in their midst. Your talents are fitting for the world, and things in it are moved to accord with your sincerity. The Star of Fortune⁹ sends down blessings for mankind, the timely rains assist the yearly outcome. Changes are carried out and there are no complaints; the jails have been emptied for a thousand days. Governing is suitable and the atmosphere harmonious; the crops have been abundant for three years. I have come from the capital, urging on my horse to get east of the passes. I love the people of this commandery, for it is like seeing the ways of great antiquity. The heart of the current Son of Heaven worries about the people and is caring-anxious.¹⁰ How can all under the Heavens be protected? Let all things be obtained by (ruling) like Duke Yüan."

He received a poem in 806 from Yang Hung-chen, a scholar in Ch'ang-an who was ill, and characteristically admired Yang for cherishing virtue and for being oblivious to wealth:

Pillow concealed, you're lonely-lone;
bending my waist, I strive and strive.
I sigh at the passage of time;
we're but a night's lodging apart.
When was it? That other day, strolling hand-in-hand,
the spring waters at K'un-ming Pond¹¹ were placid.
How many days since we left the commandery?
Summer clouds have arisen on T'ai-po Mountain.
You have not yet gained your intent,
poor and sick, a guest in the capital.
Poverty strengthens the chasteness of the determined,
sickness prolongs the feelings of the elevated.
You recline on a bench, undisturbed,
close your gates—no welcomes or partings.
The dragon reclines, heart-awaiting,
the crane is emaciated, pure in looks.
The purity came forth in the writings
you gave to me like resplendent jade.
How can I comfort your hunger and thirst?
I offer you this, a poetic strain.

To the Chinese poet, the pine symbolized longevity, elevation above the throng, and purity held steadfast; it was to the pine that Po Chü-i likened his friend Neng Lun, lamenting the fact that his talents were ignored: "The pines by the mountain torrent are lofty a hundred measurefold, cold high soaring through the four seasons. On confronting the breeze there is purity's sound; they face the sun without crookedness or shadow. How is it that the common man of the times only appreciates forests of peach and plum? How is he unaware of the virtue of steadfastness? The fragrant and scented seduce his heart. Mr. Neng studied writings; his spirit is elevated and his merits deep. In his hands a hundred verses, phrase after phrase revealing gold in sand. He has been distressed and chaste for twenty years, with no one assisting his sunken state. Now I am still poor and humble, so I can merely be your friend (but can't financially relieve your distress)."

At West Pavilion, Po inscribed a poem to Yang Yingshih which was impersonal in tenor, concluding that one does not have to enter the realm of Immortals in order to renounce the world. Yang Ying-shih was possibly one of his wife's relatives:

Quiet obtains in the area above the pavilion,
its distance matching traces beyond the dust.
Leaning on the balustrade, looking southeast,
birds extinguished, mountain upon mountain.
Bamboo dew is cold to human vexations;
blowing cryptomerias purify sick faces.
High-spirited, to true interests suited,
way and heart have a meeting.
Since here one can leave the world behind,
why does it have to be a peak of Immortals?¹²

He sent a poem to Taoist Adept Cheng, who had left retirement to serve in the Secretariat, only to sicken and revert to the reclusive life. Po reveals how living in nature appealed to the T'ang Confucian oppressed by work: "Sir Cheng got The Natural, so that emptiness arose in heart and bosom. He inhaled the vapors of smoky mist and congealed into a form (like that) of eternal snow. His Grand Lordship (the Emperor in 785) at the start of the era of Virtue Primordial, sought worthies and achieved peace. In a small chariot (Cheng) entered the blue-green of the hills and, welcomed, descended T'ien-tai Peak. At Red City Mountain (nearby) he took leave of Immortals and at terraced palaces associated with worthy officials. Time and again he received official advancement, but with reposed countenance he resigned at the palace gates. The cage-leaving crane fluttered, the forest-returning phoenix cried. In the fire one distinguishes the good jade, and passing through the mist one recognizes the virtuous pine. For his new dwelling he depended on the Ch'u Mountains, the mountains jade green and the ravines deep. The cinnabar ovens fired, smoke was dispersed; the yellow-essence (grasses) bloomed, an abundant profusion. A bed curtain of fragrant grasses, the night lute clear; a cassia (colored) wine goblet, the spring wine warmed. The men of the times didn't go to his place, the moss on the rocks had no evidences of dust. What am I doing now? I am scurrying about society in a body of senility. If I don't visit you in the direction of those forest ravines, there is no way for me to meet you in the city's streets. I finally must shed the entanglement of dust, get a place (for retirement) through divination, and wander with you…". The expression in the last line, literally "to divine a dwelling", referred to the practice of selecting through divination an auspicious site on which to build a home. There was an age-old Chinese belief that men should be instructed in how to erect buildings so that the dead, the gods, and the living could all be located within the auspicious influences of nature.¹³

He described a visit by a fellow scholar named Ch'ü,¹⁴ who likewise preferred quietude:

The west study is silent, it is already dark.
A knock on the gate with a rap-rap sound.
I know that you are coming to stay,
brush off the dust mats myself.
What is there in a village home?
Tea and fruit to welcome the guest.
Poor and quiet like a monk's dwelling,
a bamboo forest leaning on four walls.
The kitchen lamp casts a shadow aslant,
the sound of rain drips against the eaves.
If you were not a quiet-loving man,
would you be willing to share this night?

In 812, while in mourning by the Wei River, he wrote a poem in sympathy to someone identified only as Yü the Seventh, on learning of Yü's demotion. He consoled Yü with the reminder that while fame was uncertain, the mind, conscious of the arbitrariness of good or ill, triumphed over adversity.

I am sick, reclining north of the Wei River,
you are old and exiled east of Pa.
We pity one another with a long sigh;
my thin fate is the same as yours.
Having sighed, I go back to laughing;
neither laughing or sighing are yet ended.
My later heart mocks my former intent—
how deluding dull what one sees!
Human life between Heaven and Earth,
like a great bird feather in the wind;
it may soar above the blue clouds,
it may fall into mud and mire.
In court robes assisting the empire,
it comes about but I know not why.
In cloth garments trusting to the fields,
a chance going not of my own efforts.
External things cannot always be;
one should cherish personal emptiness.
Don't let grief and melancholy
lodge themselves in heart and bosom.

Po states that his poems were poorly regarded technically and thematically by contemporaries, but conjectures that admired predecessors like T'ao Yüanming and Wei Ying-wu would have appreciated them. He felt that only Yüan Chen esteemed his efforts, but Yüan lived far from him: "Lazy and sick, I always have much leisure, but when leisure comes, what to do? Still unable to abandon pen and ink, I occasionally compose a poem. The poem is done, insipid and flavorless, and is largely laughed at by the crowd. Above, they are criticized for dropping the tones and final rhymes; below, they are disliked for their stupid words and phrases. At times I hum them to myself, and when the humming ends I have my thoughts. Wei Ying-wu and T'ao Yüan-ming were of different times than mine, but apart from them who would be fond (of my poetry)? There is only Yüan Chen. He was exiled to Chiang-ling Prefecture and for three years has been an official there. We are two thousand li apart; the poem is done but he is distant and unaware (of it).

Strolling along in autumn by the banks of the Serpentine in Ch'ang-an, which coursed by the Garden of Hibiscus, Po addressed the distant Yüan Chen in a mood of reminiscence;

Lonely and desolate, the banks of the slope;
walking alone, my thoughts in excess.
The autumn lotus, on sick leaves
has white dew large as pearls.
I suddenly recall we two enjoyed the area,
the north-south corner of the Serpentine.
The pond in autumn has few visitors,
there were only you and I together.
Crying crickets hidden in red luxuriance,
emaciated horses stepping on green wasteland.
That time and this day,
both the start of late autumn—
the season so very similar,
but that time and scene no longer.
There are only men who scatter;
year after year I get no letter.

Po happened to meet Li the Third, a fellow scholar (perhaps Li Chien, 764-821), and he insisted that Li spend the night: "In life we soon become wandering officials, but don't say we lack intimate friendships. Like my heart and yours—there must be reasons for their having gotten acquainted. We parted before the Gate of Spring's Clarity (in Ch'ang-an) and met on Golden Slope. Two or three cups of village wine, detaining us through the cold day's eve. Don't despise the insipidness of village wine; we can trust to it for discussing the plain truth in our hearts. Please be less indecisive; bind your horse to the tree before my gate. Next year, if I'm in health, I am thinking of going to the rivers and lakes. If we think of one another some other day, the one I know won't be able to search me out. Our later meetings are uncertain, so stay tonight."

The unexpected visit of an old friend supplied Po with a brief poetic theme on the dispelling of loneliness:

A Friend Visits at Night

Bamboo mat, with pure breeze between the eaves;
wine cup, with a bright moon under the pines.
My solitary intent was just like this
and then my old friend came!

A long poem to Yüan Chen written in 815, before Po's demotion and transfer from Ch'ang-an, describes how Po Chü-i enjoyed leisure while at the capital. (Bright Nation Ward was located in southeast Ch'ang-an, near the Serpentine.) "I proceed into (the royal enclosure) and do obeisance before the palace gates, and then withdraw and eat breakfast below the corridor. I return to (my home at) Bright Nation Ward; the man lies down, the horse is relieved of its saddle. Then I sleep till noon, and on arising and sitting up, my heart is boundless. How much more so in the fine season, a day clear and harmonious after the rain! The green shade of the persimmon trees is fitting and the gardens and pavilions of the royal family are extensive. Hu County wine in the jug, Chung-nan Mountains above the wall. I sleep alone and then I sit alone, opening my robes before the breeze. The Zen priest and the poet-stranger gradually regard one another. If one wants to talk all-night talk, one must sleep an all-day sleep. Outside of my official calls at court I have nothing else to obstruct me:

Though my years are lengthy, my body is strong;
my rank is poor and my heart much at ease.
Luckily, I've no sudden sickness and ache,
haven't reached painful starvation and cold.
From now on I trust in quiet pleasures
with which externals cannot interfere.
I only trust those who are quiet;
it is hard to speak for the active.
Attendant-Worthy Yüan in the Censorate,
sooner or later you will be a higher official,
but until you are,
you lack leisure to accompany me.

Wu Tan sent him a poem in Ch'ang-an and he responded in kind, likening his Taoist friend to an Immortal sentenced to live in the world below. In the first line, Po refers to himself in the third person: "The Serpentine has a sick guest, one whose gates are mostly closed. Recently, since my horse died, I do not go out and am even more idle. Still, I hear someone has sent a letter and get up and go to the door to look. A white envelope with red characters written on it, inside a jadelike poem. I hum it with my mouth, listen to it with my ears, and the heat suddenly flies away. It is like rinsing the mouth with a water of cold jade, like hearing the strains of an autumn wind. The opening lines sigh at the seasons, the closing phrases (make me) think of laughing and talking with you. Slack and lazy, I don't visit others; a street apart is like a mountain apart. I once heard T'ao Yüan-ming's words that, heart remote, he was inclined towards his own area. You live in Peaceful Village Ward (just below the East Market), with tumult from carriages right and left. Bamboos and herbs enclosed in a deep courtyard, lute and wine cup opening on a small veranda. Who realizes that a southern section of the city has been converted (by you) into a world beyond? You were originally an Immortal, with your name (inscribed) in the Stone Dwelling (of Immortals). I don't know what fault you committed, to be exiled to be an Immortal in the human realm. I often fear that when your years come to fullness you will return like a breeze-wisp to Purple Smoke (Immortal realm). Don't forget that in the ephemeral world of ants, there is this Advanced Scholar who passed examinations with you in the same year."

Po expressed delight at the unexpected visit of a Mr. Ch'en, referring to him as his "elder brother", a term of deference still used today among Chinese friends:

Rejoicing at Elder Brother Ch'en's Arrival

The yellow bird's cries about to cease,
the green plum clusters half-ripened;
I sit and pity the extinction of spring things,
arise and enter the east garden for a stroll.
I take along a goblet and lazily pour wine;
suddenly I hear a door-knock sound.
When a man of leisure comes, I still rejoice,
but how much more so for Elder Brother Ch'en!
We talk away the day naturally and easily,
the prolix speech of grown men of feeling.
Don't slight a glass of wine—
(through it) one can speak a lifetime.

A poetic presentation to his friend Li Chien contains Po's philosophy of life on reaching the early forties: "The ways of the world are to esteem salary and rank, (but) Confucius fluster-flurried without them. The feeling of mankind is to love age and longevity, (but) Yen Yüan (a disciple of Confucius) died early. What were these two men like? They could do nothing about Fate and Heaven. I now believe I have much good fortune, comfort myself, and feel ashamed (to face those two) former worthies. I am already forty-four and have become a fifth-rank official. Moreover, besides satiety I have tranquillity. In early years, through personal experience I went directly to the Taoist chronicle of the blissful state; in recent years, my heart has turned towards the sect of southern Zen.¹⁵ Outwardly, I obey the ways of the world; inwardly, I leave the causation of the world. Proceeding without caring into busy streets, withdrawing without caring from the human realm. Since I've reached this mindfulness, I move about with nothing but peace. My body is at leisure without message, my mind at ease without (having to be) among rivers and lakes. High-spirited, I may drink wine; with nothing to do, I mostly close my gates. Solitary and quiet, I sit till the depths of night, tranquil steady sleep till the sun is high. In autumn I am not pained by the long nights, in spring I don't regret the flowing years. I entrust myself beyond youth and old age, forget to have cherishings between life and death. Yesterday I spoke with you, and with me you were heart-to-back.¹⁶ This is the Way (of the Tao) that can't be expressed, but for you I have forced myself to talk about it."

The next poem in Po's collection is addressed to Chang the Eighteenth, perhaps Chang Chi (765-830), urging him to stay the night:

Stopping hunger—a basket of food.
Stopping thirst—a jar of broth.
For going and coming—just one horse.
For sleeping and waking—just one bed.
Apart from these I have nothing else;
to me, having is like not having.
Why is not satiety known?
For fame and profit, hearts toil-moil.
Thinking of this; I get lazier and more lax,
piling up habits till they're commonplace.
For ten days I don't leave my gates,
all day don't go down to the yard.
Mr. Chang, who shares my sickness,
lives poorly and simply at Extended Peace Ward.
In my indolence I often think of you,
these thoughts which cannot be forgotten.
The far-far street lined with green cassias,
apart from me by eight or nine wards.
Autumn comes, I still haven't seen you;
you probably have some new poems.
Quickly, come and stay with me;
the weather turns clear and cool.

In 816, after Po had been demoted and sent south to Chiang-chou, he received a poem of comfort from a friend and expressed his gratitude in verse: "Opposite the wine an old friend sighs, sighs at my being at the end of the world. He saw my honorable treatment in former times, he thinks of me now stumbling about. He questions me about being marshal; what does the office mean? In reply I say, 'Don't sigh, listen to my song for you. I was originally a man of the hovels, more rustic and humble than mud and sand. My book-reading was less than a hundred volumes, and I relied on making verbal fun of "wind-and-flowers" (verse). After first starting official service, I received imperial mandates six times, and three times passed examinations. Looking upon my embarrassingly empty and inferior self, I really attained a great deal. Free and easy duties suffice to obscure my person, a meagre salary can supply my household. I look at my fate and am ashamed of myself (for having received such a good post); how could I consider it unseemly? I have troubled you, opposite your glass of wine, to emit a sigh for me….'"

In this poem and many others, Po holds back his self-pity and stresses mind over matter in surmounting obstacles. The statement that he is still a salaried bureaucrat shows that even while demoted he received his salary, a salary on which he and family relations depended. In describing his position at Chiang-chou, he modestly refers to it as one which allowed him maximum leisure because the governor there recognized his incompetence and let him go about as he pleased. It was at Chiang-chou that he once visited a Mr. Li, describing the visit in a poem: "The duck-weeds are small and the rush leaves short, and the spring waters of the southern lake increase. You live near the lakeside, in quiet circumstances matching your elevated feelings. I am the marshal of (Chiang-chou) Commandery, scatterbrained and stupid, with nothing to manage. The Governor (in charge) knows that I am rustic-natured, and he (lets me) withdraw from official duties and idly stroll. In my strolls I take along a small jug of wine; encountering the flowers, I incline towards them alone. Half-drunk, I go to your home, dismount and knock on (your gates of) brushwood and thorns. How can I hold back my steps? Those myriad bamboo paths winding about the eaves! How can I sober up from the wine? That single sound being hummed in (Mr. Li's) Wu accent!¹⁷ In an instant he offers the food of the fields, the food being rice (along with which) are eaten celery beauties. White plates and green bamboo chopsticks, simple and clean, no rank meat or fish odors. About to leave, I hesitate again and again; the evening crows are already aloft and crying. When can I come here again to frolic? I'll await you when the lake waters are tranquil."

He invited a neighbor east of him to spend the night:

Small jug—two liters of wine;
new matting—six feet of rest.
Can you come tonight and talk?
The pondside verges on autumn coolness.

The first two lines contain an exact parallelism in word order, setting forth a rustic scene. The last line may convey the poet's mood at the passage of time. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

His frustrations were intensified when he thought of colleagues who, out of contempt for society, were living as recluses. He wanted to join them but he had to work to support his family. Here is a poem written for Yüan the Eighteenth in 817,¹⁸ inscribed on the wall of a mountain pavilion: "I marvel at you for not rejoicing in work and for rambling about in smoke and rosy hue. Today I go to your lonely place and become clearly aware of your reasons. You dwell at the stone mountain stream pavilion; the sound of the flowing stream fills your ears. For drink, your wine is in cowry shell cups; drunk, you lie down and cannot rise. I see you at the (loftiest peak of Mount Lu, the) Peak of the Five Ancients, and repent exceedingly that I live in the city. I love your three sons, and for the first time sigh that I am childless. Below Lu Peak I am about to put together a house and become a recluse. North of the mountain and east of the mountain; my goings and comings will start from this time."

Po wrote a letter in reply to letters from Ts'ui Ch'un and Ch'ien Hui comforting him on his having been demoted to Chiang-chou, and followed this up with a poem in which he made it clear that he accepted fate. He compared himself to a fish in a muddy stream and his friends to phoenixes soaring above. The phoenix usually symbolized either the Emperor or matters pertaining to him, such as service in his court: "Day and night—twice vegetables and food, during the day a leisurely sleep. This then completes one day; it has already been like this for three years. My heart doesn't select the pleasures of the times, my feet don't seek the tranquillity of the locale. Success or failure, far or near, are one coherency without two extremes. I often see the men of the present, whose hearts are not this way. In toil they think of rest, in a place of quiet they think of noise. If one uses heart and body like this, there is no way not to injure and despoil oneself. Seated—if grief and worry enter how can (such persons) get a wholeness of form and spirit?

"I have two friends of the Way, splendid—resplendent Ts'ui and Ch'en. Together they soar above the green-cloud path (of high promotion); alone I fall into the muddy yellow springs (of demotion). At year end all things change, but unchanging their old feelings (towards me)! They have the same hearts as always and share the same stream with me. The imperial hamlet (of Ch'angan) is farther than the sun, the Man of Beauty (on the throne) is high in the heavens. Who says that ten thousand li separate us? It is often as if you are before my eyes. The fish enjoys the muddy stream; the phoenix rambles along the path of clouds. Don't say the clouds and mud differ, for in bliss transcendent they are the same. Therefore, because you asked about my feelings (on being demoted), after writing a letter I later by chance composed this poem. I caution you not to speak to others, for people will mostly laugh at these words."

"Empty Boat" Kuo, an alchemist friend,¹⁹ paid a call on a cold night in 818 and the visit was remembered in verse. "Empty Boat" was probably a Taoist appelation, implying that Mr. Kuo had achieved a state of perfect quietude:

Morning warm, we go to the southern eaves;
evening cold, we return to the rear room.
At dark we drink one or two cups of wine,
at night play two or three games of chess.
Cold ashes bury the obscure light,
dawn's glow focuses on the remnant candle.
He doesn't mind, this man of poverty and cold,
and at times spends the night with me.

After a lapse of three years in the poetry collection (819-21), Po wrote a poem in 822 to describe how he was moved by the sight of an old hat given him by one now deceased:

Formerly, your black gauze hat
you presented me, the white-haired old man.
The hat is now atop my head,
but you've returned to the (netherworld) springs.
A thing old can still bear use;
a man gone cannot be met.
The Ch'i Mountains—this night's moon.
Grave trees—just then an autumn breeze.

In the last poem concerning friends and friendship to be cited from his section on the quiet pleasures, which he wrote at fifty, he reverted to his favorite topic of the meaninglessness of life and the emptiness of things. Laughing at life as Chuang-tzu advised was the alternative to meditation:

South-soughing wind, warning of the cold,
dark-darkening sun, concealing its brilliance.
I urge you to drink the murky brew,
listen to me sing in clear melody (style).
The fragrant season changes to impoverished shadow,
the morning light becomes the evening glow.
I was born in this world with you.
Not meeting, we've increased the fewness of our years.
This morning allowing ourselves this frolic,
how can we plan on a tomorrow?
If we don't sit in cross-legged meditation,
we should open our mouths and laugh.

Chapter 7 Autobiographical Poems

The last series of poems about quiet pleasures are autobiographical. In these poems the poet looks at personal and family situations, comments on life, and remarks on aging. The poems, presented in chronological order, date from 800 to 822, or when the poet was twenty-eight to fifty. They cover the periods of early service in the capital, mourning for his mother, demotion to the south, and assignment as governor of Suchou. The first poem, written in 800 after Po Chü-i passed the exams for Advanced Scholar, describes how he left his friends and got ready to return home: "Ten-years constant hard study; one elevation, fallaciously making a name. Getting chosen isn't yet being eminent; there will first be honor when I congratulate my parents. Six or seven of my fellow examinees send me forth from the imperial city. Horses and carriage about to move, the music of leave-taking resounds. Self-satisfaction reduces the remorse of parting, and half-drunk I look lightly upon the distant journey. Flutter-flutter, the swiftness of the horses' hoofs; the spring day reverts to feelings of home."

When Po Chü-i was thirty-four, he wrote a poetic reflection on the passage of time, an oft-echoed later theme: "Mornings, I see the sun ascend the heavens; evenings, I see the sun enter the earth. Before I have realized it, in the bright mirror suddenly my years are thirty-four. Don't say my body still isn't old, for age quickly is about to come. Though white hairs still have not grown, my rose face has already deteriorated in advance. What is human life like? It's like being in the world as an overnight guest. Though there is a seventy-year period, not one or two out of ten (achieve it). Now I am still not enlightened and often feel dissatisfied. Why don't I store up a spirit of boundlessness in my heart? Poverty and humbleness—there is no one who doesn't hate them, but the way is there and it is not worth (trying to) avoid. Wealth and eminence—there is no one who doesn't love them, but when the time comes they arrive of themselves. Therefore, the heart of an all-pervasive man can't be bothered by externals. One should only drink fine wine, be happy-jolly drunk all day. Such words are superior to gold and jade; respect them, don't let them fall away."

Three years later, as a Hanlin Academician, Po commented in verse on his philosophy of tranquillity: "I am not old and I am not young; my years exceed thirty-six. I am not humble and I am not eminent, and at court I have first risen by command. My talents are small and my destiny easily suffices; my heart is extensive and my body is always in comfort. Whatever fills my intestines is fine food; anything which accommodates my knees affords easy living. Moreover, below this Pine Tree Study are one lute and several books. The books—I don't seek detailed understanding; the lute—I depend on for self-amusement. Some nights I sleep within His Lordship's gates; (other) nights I return (home) and recline in my hut. My body entrusts itself to natural movements, my heart is committed to emptiness and void. Holding to these I am about to pass my days—in naturalness there is much tranquil pleasure. I am muddled and silent, not wise and not foolish."

In 810, at thirty-eight, Po wrote a poem to express pleasure at having gotten an administrative post near Ch'ang-an. He was delighted with the salary increase that his parents and relatives could now share: "By imperial mandate I have been appointed administrative officer; I uphold the mandate and thank my Lordship for his favor. Thanking him for his favor is not for myself; the emoluments (of the new position) extend to my parents. My brothers wear official adornments; their brides strictly (regulate) dress and kerchief (to pay a formal visit to their in-laws). They arrive below the lofty hall (of my parents), and splendid—resplendent offer congratulations. My state salary is forty-fifty thousand cash monthly; I can supply (our needs) day and night. My food income is two hundred piculs, so all year my rice storehouse can overflow. Noisily the horses and carriages come; congratulatory guests fill our gates. They don't consider me greedy, knowing my family's poverty. We give a banquet, inviting the congratulatory guests, and guest after guest delights and enjoys. They laugh and say; 'From now on you won't have to worry again about an empty wine goblet.' I reply, saying: 'It is as you say; please wait a bit (for my words). I have an ambition in life, and after getting tipsy will set it forth for you. Human life is a hundred-year period, but how many get to be seventy? Drifting honor and empty rank; the body's (temporary) guests. Only food and clothing are coarsely related to the body's (essential needs). If one merely avoids hunger and cold, other things are one and all (as insubstantial as) the floating clouds'."

Po also served as a Hanlin Academician, and in 810, while in service, he inscribed this poem on a portrait of himself done by portraitist Li Fang. He was thirty-eight: "My looks I myself don't recognize; Li Fang draws my likeness. Quietly looking at its spirit and bones, it is just like a man in the mountains. The river willow by its nature easily decays, (out) the heart of the deer is hard to train. How did I come to serve in the red(-lacquered) palace courtyard, for five years a (Hanlin) official in attendance? With such a firm but timid nature, moreover, it is hard for me to be in harmony with others in the world. I am not only not an official of eminence, but I fear I will beget disaster. I should quit soon and consign my body to clouds and stream."

He wrote two poems about leisure at forty, reiterating that officialdom was suited to the crooked but not to the straight:

Heart At Ease (I)

I have been a traveller for ten years,
constantly grieved by cold and hunger.
For three years I was a censor,
covered by the shame of total inability.
There was wine but no time to drink;

there were mountains but I couldn't frolic.
How could I lack ambition in life?
I was hemmed in and unfree.
One morn I returned to above the Wei River,
drifting about like an untied boat.
I place my heart outside worldly things,
without joy, and without grief.
All day one coarse meal,
all year one cloth garment.
Cold comes—I am especially lazy and unrestrained,
several days combing my hair but once.
Mornings, I sleep enough and then first wake;
evenings, I get drunk on wine and then rest.
The human heart is nothing more than ease—
beyond ease what is there to seek?

Heart At Ease (II)

In early years I travelled everywhere,
extremely familiar with the world's ways;
in middle age I added official ranks,
fully seeing into matters of court.
To be a journeyer is truly difficult,
to be an official is especially not easy.
Moreover, I was just then timid and cautious,
and what I did often caused opposition.
The straight way accelerated my calamities;
the fawning encounter was not my ambition.
In my bosom for ten years,
boundless vigor entirely dissipated.
Since returning to the (Wei) farmlands,
suddenly I feel a lack of grief and shame.
(This) twisted tree is hard to use for doing;
the floating clouds easily pursue the heart.
Anxiety on anxiety, one's body and world;
from here on I will abandon both.

At thirty-nine, he wrote a poem at the start of summer to celebrate his having been cured of illness: "How long since I've been born? Fourteen thousand days. When I reflect on that interval, if I wasn't worried, then I was sick. As age goes, my thoughts gradually settle; as the years advance, my sickness is first cured. Suddenly I rejoice that heart and body are at peace and without pain. Moreover, this early summer moon is pure and harmonious and of the fine season. A slight breeze blows my garments; I am neither hot nor cold. I move my pillow under the shadow of the trees. Throughout the day what do I do? I may drink a bowl of tea, I may hum a couple of poems. Inwardly, I'm not oppressed by grief or care; outwardly, I'm not fettered by official duties. If this day I don't please myself, what time is the time of pleasure?"

In late spring he went to buy wine and wrote of how it brought on obliteration of the senses: The hundred flowers fall like snow; the hair on both temple (sides) suspends a silken (white). Spring goes and comes again, but I age and have no (second) time of youth. Humans in life await wealth and eminence and for pleasures are often distressed and slowed. Days of poverty and humbleness are better, for then melancholy is dispelled as destiny decrees. I sell the horse I am riding, pawn my old court clothes, use everything to buy wine to drink, walk in drunkenness, and am about to return. My given name and surname daily more obscure, my physical form daily deteriorating. I lie down drunk in Mr. Huang's wineshop; does anyone there know who I am?

Po at forty replied in verse to a fortune-teller, stating why he didn't need to have his fortune told:

Sick eyes, muddled like night;
failing hair, blowing like autumn.
Except for essential food and clothes,
I desist from all things in life.
I know you are a skilled seer;
you ask if I've decided to have my fortune told.
If I don't, there is no other reason
than that among humans nothing do I seek.

In 812, while in mourning at Wei Village, Po wrote three poems on the joys of farm labor. The title of the poetic trilogy was "Returning to the Fields":

The First Poem

What desires are there in human life? What is desired is only the two extremes. Ordinary men love wealth and eminence, elevated scholars envy Gods and Immortals. But Gods and Immortals must have a (religious) registration; wealth and eminence likewise depend on Heaven. Don't love the ways of the capital, don't seek mountains of Immortals. The dust of the western capital is vast, the waves of the eastern sea are boundless. The golden gate (where scholars await the imperial mandate) cannot be (easily) entered, and how can the jade trees (on the mountains of Immortals) be climbed? Better to return beneath the mountains, to till spring fields as prescribed.

The Second Poem

I have already resolved to till the fields. How have I resolved to do it? I'll sell my horse and buy calves to use, and go back on foot to my thatched hut in the fields. Welcoming spring, I put farm implements in order; awaiting rain, I open barren fields to cultivation. Leaning on my cane, I stand at the head of the fields, personally instructing my servants. I hear the words of an old peasant: "In farming take precautions at the start. Don't be careless in whatever you do and your reward will always be abundance. Above, seek to offer up the king's taxes; below, hope to supply your household stocks. How can you let yourself be lazy and indolent, folding hands and dragging along the garment hem?" Studying farming is not being plebeian; friends, don't laugh at me. Wait till after next year; you yourselves will determine the plow and grasp the hoe.

The Third Poem

At thirty, I was an official close (to the Throne), at my waist a girdle of tinkling jade. At forty, I am a peasant, studying how to rake in grain in the field. How can one say that in ten years a change could be as swift as this? This way is definitely the usual one; success and failure are interdependent. For fish there is the deep water, for birds there are the high trees. Why must one guard (only) one corner (of life); in distress one hems oneself in. Changing my feet to a horse's (hoofs), I would therefore be able to travel the land. Changing my hands to pellets (to fire at birds), I would therefore be able to seek flesh (for my food). My external form is a strange thing but, entrusting to what is accorded, my heart is still satisfied. Fortunately, I was able to revert to farming; how does one know that this isn't good fortune? Furthermore, I am about to get old, gradually dimming like a candle before the breeze. Who can even for an instant take his heart and bind it to (concepts of) glory and shame?

He described how he strolled about the fields in the autumn of 812, just before a large harvest was due. He conversed with the peasants and was well received: "The seventh (lunar) month is already half gone; there is an early coolness and the weather is clear. On a morn I rise, comb and dress, slowly walking beyond my (gate of) brushwood and thorn. There is dew on the walking cane and the bamboo is cold; the wind blows my garment and the Annam banana cloth is light. I go quietly hand in hand with my younger brothers and their children, going up together in autumn for a stroll to the fields. The new jujubes are not yet entirely red, the late melons have an excess of aroma. With these fruits, a dependable old peasant welcomes us. Since I have gone to this village, my white hairs often appear. (But in) the village I have old acquaintances, and young and old all have feelings (about me). We stop (here and there) and towards evening I turn homewards. Tree after tree—wind and cicadas crying. The new rain suffices at this time, and grains on both sides of the road are green. Seeing this causes men complete satisfaction; why must one await the autumn harvest?"

Later that autumn, during the festival of Double Nine, Po Chü-i ascended West Plain with his brothers to feast and look around. He described the next poem as a joint compilation by him and his brothers: "Sick, I love the coolness of pillow and mat; the sun is high but my sleep still hasn't ended. My brothers call me to rise—today is the festival of Double Nine.² I rise, climb West Plain and look around, cherishing the thought that we share the diversion as one. We change our places and go to a chrysanthemum grove, lining up before the rice cakes and the wine. Though there are no string or reed instruments, we sing and laugh as we please. The bright sun has not yet declined, (but) our faces are flushed with wine and our ears are hot. Wine-intoxicated, we look in the four directions; how empty and vast the six points of the universe! Heaven and Earth are long and old of themselves, but how long will this man live? Please look at the village beneath the plains; the villagers die unceasingly. Forty families in one village, weepings and burials month after month. Pointing to this, we each encourage the other; on the good occasions delight and take pleasure."

Po Chü-i, ill in 812, wrote about the inevitability of illness in a poem sent to comfort a sick friend: "At thirty-two, white hairs came to life, the chronic ailment of early deterioration. At forty, I was a seventh-rank official, (so low in rank) only because of my stupidity. My facial features decline and wither daily, my fate becomes daily more hapless. How can I alone be like this? Even sages and worthies cannot avoid it. When I look around at intimates and old friends, I lift up my eyes and sigh excessively (at their fates). Some die in old age, sunken in humbleness like mud and sand; others in initial robustness are scattered suddenly like flowers to the wind. In impoverished hunger and early death many are worse off than I. Because of this, on the contrary I comfort myself and often make my heart at peace and in harmony. So I say to the one who joins me in illness, 'Cause your sighs to turn into song'."

At forty, Po was keenly aware that youth had vanished and that the worst was before him. He entitled his poem "Playfully Enjoying the Chrysanthemums at East Garden": "My youth was already gone the other day, my fragrant years are also finished. With such a lonely feeling I come again to this cool barren garden. In the garden I long stand alone; the sun('s rays) are shallow, the wind and dew cold. The autumn vegetables are completely overgrown with weeds, the good trees are likewise withered with frost. There are only a few clusters of chrysanthemums, newly opening their blossoms by the fence. Holding a wine goblet in hand, depend on it for drinking and for dawdling before the flowers:

I remember the small days of my youth,
when it was easy to be drawn into enjoyment.

I saw wine and drank without season—
I was happy (even) without drinking.
Now that I have recently gotten older,
I gradually feel it is hard for me to enjoy.
I often fear this getting feebler and older
and force my drinking, but without pleasure.
I turn about and say to you chrysanthemums,
"So late—why are you alone still fresh?
I really know it is not for me,
but for a bit you've resolved my melancholy."

Po is most engaging when he writes about himself, for here he succeeds in removing barriers between poet and reader; whatever he feels is fully revealed, without rationalization or artifice. This is a poem about his own stupidity:

What is received (from Heaven) are cleverness and stupidity;
what one cannot change is one's nature.
What is (likewise) bestowed are the cordial and the thin;
what one cannot remove is one's fate.
My nature is stupid and clumsy,
my fate is thin and difficult.
If you ask me how I know,
I have good reasons for knowing.
I also once raised my two feet,
imitated mankind's trodding on the red dust.
From this I knew my nature was stupid
for I could not understand (why men) revolved like a cart's wheels.
I also once flurried my wing feathers,
flying aloft the green clouds (of officialdom).
From this I knew my fate was thin,
for my wings withered and I soon fell to earth.
I envy the eminent and loathe the humble,
enjoy riches and hate poverty.
In this all are the same twixt Heaven and Earth—
how am I any different from (other) men?
If my nature and fate are like this,
by opposing them I produce bitterness and pain.
Therefore, I am tranquil with my fate,
though impoverished, always happy and cheerful.
Repairing sedge to make my hut,
plaiting weeds to make my door.
I weave cloth to produce my outer robe,
plant grains to fill my food bowl,
quietly read the books of the ancients,
leisurely fish by the clear Wei River's banks.
Self-satisfied and in frolic
I'll trust to these to end my days.

In 814, mourning ended, Po spent a lonely winter's night. His usually buoyant mood changed to one of despondency at being isolated:

House poor, loved ones scattered;
body sick, social intercourse ceased.
Not a person before my eyes,
alone I lie, concealed from the village.
Lonely and cold, the lantern light is dark;
apart and revealed, screens and curtains are broken.
Falling-falling before window and door
I hear the new snow coming down.
As I get older I gradually sleep less,
in night depths I rise and sit erect.
I do not study sitting with a vacant heart—
how can I spend my loneliness?
Solemn seated, my body is world-entrusted,
but my boundless heart is change-entrusted.
Like this for four years,
one thousand three hundred nights.

Po Chü-i appreciated the scenery in the Mount Lu area, and in the autumn of 816 he decided to build a grass chapel on the side of a peak there close by a Buddhist temple. The chapel was completed the following spring, constructed from choice building materials. The mountain could be seen above, the running stream heard below. A tea-and-fruit reception was held there on the ninth day of the fourth lunar month, the day after the Buddha's birthday, attended by twentytwo local temple priests and friends.³ Po had then been living in the chapel for thirteen days. Here is a poem he inscribed on a rock about his feelings on having built the chapel:

North side (of Mount Lu)—Fragrant Hearth Peak;
West side—the Temple of Love Bequeathed.
White rocks, how fresh and bright!
Clear streams with flowing sounds.
There are several tens of pine trees,
there are over a thousand bamboos.

The pines extend a cover of green umbrellas,
the bamboos lean against reddish jade.
There is no one living below them.
How remote! So many years.
Sometimes monkeys and birds are assembled,
throughout the day empty smoke and breeze.
At the time there is a foolish one
surnamed Po, given name Lo-t'ien.
He ordinarily has no likes,
but seeing this his heart yearns.
It is if he has gotten his year-ending land
and suddenly he forgets to return.

Peak supported, he builds a thatched hut,
makes a moat and opens a tea garden.
How shall I wash my ears?
With the falling stream flying above my roof.
How shall I wash my eyes?
With white lotuses rising neath stone steps.
In my left hand I hold a single jug,
in my right hand grasp a five-stringed lute.
Proud and self-satisfied in intent
I sit with legs extended into the (scenic) midst.
Intoxicated with interest, I look to Heaven and sing,
in the song depend on words to convey (what I feel).
Say I am fundamentally a man of the fields,
mistakenly drawn into the net of the world.
Formerly, I served the Sun (of the Heavens);
old, I now return to the mountains.
The weary bird gets to the thick tree foliage,
the stranded fish returns to the clear stream.
Rejecting this (area) where could I go?
So many dangers and difficulties in the world of men.

In another poem about scenic beauty, written when he was forty-five, Po asserted the best time to enjoy leisure was between forty and fifty:

At thirty, one's vigor is most imposing,
in one's bosom much right and wrong.
At sixty, one's body is too old,
the four limbs do not support it.
From forty to fifty
is just the time for withdrawal and leisure.
Getting older, I recognize my destiny;
heart indolent, I want to manage little.
Seeing wine, the excitement's still there;
climbing mountains, my strength still hasn't decayed.
My years happily reaching these,
I'll soon make a date with the white clouds.

He was also forty-five when he wrote a poem about playing with his niece and daughter, who exerted on him a this-world attraction and prevented a this-life abandonment:

"I have a niece just six years old, called A-kuei; I have a daughter three years old—her name is Lo-erh. One first learns how to laugh and talk, one can sing songs and poems. In the morning they pillow my clothes. How late you've been born! My years are already going towards decay. Human feelings—one can think for the small; human intent—as one gets older compassion increases. Wine is beautiful but it must finally spoil; the moon is round but in the end something is lacking. It is like the affinity of favor and love, the source of worry and affliction. Looking at the world, it is all in these bonds, but how can I leave it?"

There were rebellions in 817 and 818. In a poem written during this period, Po commented on his military inability and cautioned himself against getting involved. The poem was inscribed on a corner of his chair: "My hands are not entrusted with a spear, my shoulders cannot bear a plow. I evaluate my strength and estimate its use, and it isn't even equal to that of one man. Luckily, because of the merit of pen and ink, I got to climb the path of scholarly advance. I had five or six successive official posts, my emoluments sufficing for wife and child. I have a few servants left and right, a one-rider carriage for going in and out. Though what I receive is not substantial, still I don't come to starvation and distress.

"If one reaches this point, what is it like from a bystander's view? (The bystander will envy him.) Though one is a worthy, he's lucky (to have good fortune;) how much more so a rustic and fool like myself! Po-i was an ancient worthy (but) starvation in the mountains was his sentence. The times! With no help for it, all are changed into death from starvation. Remembering others, I feel more and more ashamed and do not dare to forget this even for an instant. My ordinary honor-and-profit heart has been broken through and destroyed; nothing of it remains. I still fear that delusions of the (realm of) dust will arise, and (therefore) inscribe this poem on the corner of my chair."

In his middle forties, Po Chü-i looked at the portrait done by Li Fang ten years earlier and wrote a poetic commentary:

In the past when I was thirty-six,
face drawn in cinnabar and green.
I am now forty-six,
old, decrepit, recumbent in Chiang City.
How was I limited to ten years of aging?
I have taken on all manner of distress.
I contrast the old portrait (with my present looks),
but never will my former looks reappear.
Form and reflection silently look at one another
like a younger brother facing an elder brother.
How much more so letting others look;
how can it not obscure the usual me?

The Sun's charioteer whips the sun to run, and for me it won't stop even a little. Form and skeleton are subordinate to sun and moon; what suffices to startle one about getting old? What I am remorseful about is that in the Pavilion of Lofty Mist I did not get to (have my portrait) painted (as one of the officials with) a meritorious name.⁴

Po Chü-i wrote a poem during these times (817-18) about living in withdrawal, incidentally the same theme that had induced T'ao Yüan-ming to compose his twenty drinking poems. But Po's poem was in a sober, spartan mood:

Lungs sick, I do not drink wine;
eyes dimmed, I do not read books.
Sitting erectly with nothing to do,
mind and body have an excess of leisure.
Birds go to roost, darkness falls by the bamboo fence;
snow reflects on trees of a sparsely wooded forest.
Solitude and loneliness already at extremes,
why does one have to live in the mountains?

In 818 he spent time with younger brother Po Hsingchien (c. 774-826), a renowned Advanced Scholar and prose writer. He showed Hsing-chien the following poem, which includes family details: "This morning one jug of wine—how we delight and enjoy! This joy comes from within; how can others know of it? We are only the two brothers, with distant separation always paining and saddening. This spring, you returned tranquilly ten thousand li from the Szechwan gorges. There are also two adolescent younger sisters, at the age of putting up the hair (at fifteen) but not yet contracted for; the other day their weddings were completed and their good men can both be depended on. Grief and anxiety disperse and are resolved, like a knife cutting through a rope which binds. My body light and my heart unfettered, suddenly I want to soar above the Heavens. If troubles accumulate in human life, (even) eating meat is often like (suffering from) starvation. Since my heart is without distress, (by merely) drinking water I can get fattened. Hsing-chien, I urge wine for you. Hold your cup and listen to my words. I do not sigh at the distance of (your) hamlet (from home), I do not detest the trifling official emoluments, but I wish that you and I to the end of our days will never be separated."

In 822 the fifty-year old Po journeyed towards Hangchow to take up the post of governor. En route he lodged at Clear Stream Temple, a site in Shensi where he had been years before on his way to demotion at Chiang-chou. Here are his poetic reflections: "In the past, when I was banished to Hsün-yang (in Chiang-chou), I rested at night in Circular Rim Valley (in Shensi). Now on a journey to Hangchow, again I pass by and lodge at this temple. How many years has it been? The valley grasses have turned green sixteen times. I don't see the old monk of the house; green are the newly-planted trees. In the empty heavens run sun and moon, and in the world, mountain changes to valley. I was born and lodged in the midst; who can escape (the cycle of) blessings and misfortunes? In accord with affinity I again go south, to live well (if destiny so decrees) among the bamboos of the eastern verandas." ("Sun and Moon" sometimes allude to Emperor and Empress.)

The next poem, composed on horseback, contains his thoughts on the vicissitudes of fortune which he experienced prior to the Hangchow appointment. It too was written when he was fifty: "In getting through life I have not been unlucky; honors to my person have been excessive. In honors I became Grand Pillar of the State, in enfeoffment a Grand Minister of the Court. I ask myself what talent I have, to twice enter a residence for attending officials. I also ask what political talent I have, to ride again in a red-wheeled carriage (for the eminent). Moreover, I am a man of the eastern mountains, one who himself is merely simple and crude. I play the lute and again have wine, but I envy (the famed Three Kingdom inebriates) Hsi (K'ang) and Juan (Chi). I secretly was pushed forward by my village and mistakenly ascended to the writing ability of a worthy. Once registered as a court official, I consequently became entangled in the net of the world. Above, there was the worry from the nets (set by evildoers); below, there were the pitfalls (to be avoided). I always felt the universe was narrow and never experienced comfort of mind and body. I took false steps for twenty years, and below my jaw there sprouted a white beard. Why say I was sent out in demotion? I still was able to reside as a local official. Hangchow—five thousand li (beyond); I go there like a fish tossed into the water's depths. Though I still have not rid myself of official duties, I nevertheless come to drift along rivers and lakes. There are many poets in the Wu (region where Hangchow is situated) and also quite a few wine sellers. They hum their poetry in high voices, laugh aloud, and the wine cups fly. At fifty, I am not yet completely old and can still delight and enjoy. I use this (poetry and wine) to send off the sun and moon; what do you gentlemen think of it? The autumn breeze starts up on the river, the bright sun falls by a corner of the road. I turn my head and speak to my governor's horses; go on (to Hangchow), don't be undecided."

Singing Alone in the Mountains (818)

Men all have one bad habit;
my bad habit is poetic forms.
All my common affinities have disappeared,
leaving only this won't-go-away (poetry) sickness.
Everytime I encounter beautiful scenery
or confront good relatives and friends,
in high voice I sing a stanza,
transported as if I've met with the gods.

Since becoming a traveller at Chiang,
I've lived in the mountains half the time.
Sometimes new poems are produced;
alone I ascend the east cliff road.
My body leans on a precipice of white rocks,
my hands grasp a green cassia tree.
My wild singing startles forest and stream—
monkeys and birds all peek at me.
Fearing I will be laughed at by the world,
I therefore go to places unpeopled.

Po Chü-i's feelings of compassion extended to all things and beings; here is a poem he wrote in 817 or 818 about releasing birds from captivity: "On a clear dawn I approach the river and look; birds on the river are just then noisily clamoring. The ducks and geese and the seagulls and egrets flurry their wings, swim about, and play in the blazing sun of morn. Just then a chicken peddler happens by, grasping roosters; he comes from a distant village. Flying and crying about for those (river birds), what pleasures! (But) for these (roosters) that have been bound—what remorse! Cackling, beating their fourteen wings, bound together in the same bird cage. Their feet are injured, their golden claws shrivel; their heads are ruffled up, their crowns misshapen. For two nights, all out of food and drink. When the sun is high they will call on the butcher's gate. Turning about in the cage but not yet dead, so hungry and thirsty they wish to swallow down (food and drink) together.

"I have often yearned for the ways of the ancients; trust and benevolence, extending (even) to pigs and fish. Seeing this, my feelings of compassion arise, and I buy and release them at Twin Forest Garden. When I open the cage and untie the ropes, all of you roosters listen to my words: 'I gave three hundred cash for you, a small favor not worth talking about. Don't imitate that ring-holding sparrow who put himself into difficulties in order to repay a kindness'." (The reference to a "ring-holding sparrow" is to a story in the Later Han about a young boy who rescued a sparrow from the clutches of another bird. In return, the sparrow gave the boy four white rings and told him his descendants would be as pure white as the rings.)⁵

Po was fundamentally a man of peace, wishing to live removed from bustle, confusion, and disorder, a man who preferred roaming temples to military exploit. In 816 he once enjoyed himself by West Forest Temple at Mount Lu; after describing the grandeur of early spring in the first lines of his poem, he referred to a troop rebellion that started in 815 and was pacified two years later:

This year the Huai bandits arose,
everywhere there's the impetus of warfare.
Wise scholars labor in thinking up strategies,
military officials are pained (trying) to subjugate.
There is only the me of no talent,
mountain-playing with streams and rocks.

Po composed a long poem in the autumn of 814, 260 lines in all, about the pleasures of roaming temples and in it revealed his poetic versatility in conjuring up scenic splendors and in sustaining a mood of wonder at the majestic sights beheld. He deliberately chose rare words to convey impressions of rare scenic beauty. Here is convincing evidence that Po Chü-i usually wrote verse which is simple and easy to comprehend through choice rather than necessity. He could, if he wanted, exhaust the lexicon in his search for the precise phase. The allegation of a Sung writer that Po first read his poetic compositions to an old woman to ensure that she understood is persuasive for much of Po Chü-i's poetry but implausible for poems like the one translated below. Po's poems could be as easy or difficult to read as he wished, for his range of competence was extensive and varied. This poem, entitled "Frolicking to the Temple of Truth Realized", illuminates another side of Po's nature, that of the Buddhist devotee who accepted the popular faith unquestioningly and believed in its miracles. The poem first depicts his entering the mountains and next describes how he enters the temple, leaving behind the ordinary world and sensing that he has reached a realm of Immortals. He visits famed temple sites and stays the night. On the following day he climbs the highest of the adjacent mountain peaks and then visits the Shrine of Immortals and the Temple of the Painted Dragon; in the temple he sees a painting by Wu Tao-tzu and calligraphy by Ch'u Sui-liang. Wu Tao-tzu (c. 700-60) was the most renowned painter of his age, noted for wall paintings in temples and mountains. Ch'u Sui-liang (596-658), who became a prominent official during the reign of T'ang T'ai-tsung, was especially famed for his mastery of old styles of calligraphy.

The poem has 130 rhymes, restricted to the so-called ancient-level tone; in terms of contemporary Peking speech, all rhymes end in either first or second tones. One Chinese critic has described the effect as being like a succession of detailed statements which abound in splendor and contain no superfluous or weak words.⁶ Many of the phrases coined by Po in this poem have remained in Chinese, still listed in dictionaries in their line contexts. But despite its literary merits and refined elegance, "Frolicking to the Temple of Truth Realized" is relatively unknown. It lacks the enthralling narrative qualities of "Lament Everlasting" and "Lute Song" and requires more intellectual effort by the reader. It was composed in 814, when the forty-two-year-old poet was probably concluding the prescribed mourning for his mother:

Frolicking to the Temple of Truth Realized

Autumn—ninth year of Original Harmony;⁷
the eighth month, its first quarter moon.
I frolic to the Temple of Truth Realized,
the temple in the Mountain of Royal Accord.
Leaving the mountain four or five li
one first hears the flowing current sounds.
From here, abandoning horse and carriage,
one first fords the bend of Blue Ravine,
hand supporting a green bamboo staff,
feet trodding white stones of the rapids.
I gradually marvel at the remissness of my senses,
not hearing the clamor of the human world.
Below the mountain, I look up at it
and suspect at first it can't be climbed;
who knows there is a road in its midst,
crooked, winding peak to peak?
I rest beneath a flagstaff,
rest again beside a stone niche,
the niche interval more than ten feet long,
with its doors boltless.
Looking down and peeking I see no one;
rocks ferns suspended like braids of hair.
Startled exiting white bats
flying paired like overturned snow.
Turning around to view temple gates,
blue cliffs straddling red eaves,
like breaking open the mountain's belly
to place a temple in its midst.

Entering the gates, there's no level area,
the land narrow, the sky void unconfined;
rooms and corridors, terraces and halls,
highs and low according with peaks and ridges.
Cliff and precipice handfuls of earth,
the trees mostly lean and sturdy.
Roots and stumps stone-wrapped and long,
crooked and bending (like) coiled insects and snakes.
Pines and cassias chaotic and disordered,
all four seasons densely luxuriant.
Fragile branch tips blowing pure,
sounding like musical strings in the wind.
The sun-moon rays don't penetrate,
greenness and shadow interchange and protract;
a solitary bird—then one sound;
hearing it it's like a cold cicada.

At first I rest at Guest Status Pavilion,
going to a seat, not yet tranquil.
In a moment I open the north door
to ten thousand li of bright openness;
brushing away the eaves, rainbow formation,
coiling round pillars, clouds encircling.
White shower between red sun,
cloudy and clear sharing lone stream,
field greenery crowding grasses and trees,
the eye's world swallowing capital fields.
The Wei River—tiny, unseen;
The Han Tombs⁸—smaller than one's fist.
When I look back at the road I came,
winding about, reflecting red balustrades,
a clear order of mountain ascenders
distantly can be seen, one by one.

In front I face Many-Treasured Pagoda,
wind bells crying in its four corners;
cornice—supporting corbels, doors, and windows,
with harmonious gold-jade muchness.
It is said in antiquity Kasyapa Buddha⁹
on this ground sat in nirvana.
To this day His iron almsbowl exists,
the bottom bearing His hand-shape.
West I open the Hall of Jade Images,
white Buddhas crudely back-to-back;
I shake and sift dust-laden garments,
worship before the eternal snow visages.
Piled-up hoarfrost becomes the kasaya robe,¹⁰
threaded hailstones become the hair adornment;
looking closely, one suspects supernatural merit—
its traces aren't dug and carved outwardly.
Next I ascend to the Hall of Kuan-yin;¹¹
before arriving smell sandalwood fragrance.
I climb the stairs, removing both sandals,
reverent steps ascending to a mat immaculate.
Six great pillars displaying jade mirrors,
four sides spreading gold and inlays.
Black night naturally glows bright
without awaiting lamp or candlelight.
All treasures reciprocally low or lofty,
ornaments of greenish jade, girdle gems, coral.
The wind-coming seems like Heaven's music,
sound impinging on tinkling sound;
white pearls hanging down, congealed,
red pearls dripping blood-colored.
Adornments on the Buddha's headdress,
joining in a crown of seven treasures.¹²
Twin vases of white porcelain,
color like coldness of autumn waters;
separated from the vases, I see holy bones
turning round like a golden elixir.
A jade flute, of dynasty unknown:
A man of Heaven bestowed it on Jetavana.¹³
Blown like the sound of a crane in autumn,
one could thereby send down spirits and Immortals.

The time is just mid-autumn,
fifteenth-day moon perfect round.
Treasure Hall—opening three gates,
the moon's gold disc is before me.
Moon and treasure dazzle one another,
bright glows compete for freshness and elegance.
Illuminating man, heart and bones cold,
all night I don't want to sleep.
At dawn seeking the southern pagoda route,
disorderly bamboos bending with beauty and charm.
Forest solitude, not encountering men,
cold butterflies, quick-quick flight.
Mountain fruits—I don't know their names
flourishingly drooping down both road sides
suffice to cure hunger and fatigue;
picking and tasting, flavor sweet-sour.

South of the road, the God of Indigo Ravine:¹⁴
Purple rain protector, white paper money;
if the year has flood or drought,
duckweed-mugwort offerings by royal command.
Because the ground was pure and clean,
sacrificial offerings lacked rank-flesh smells.
Perilous rocks piled up four and five,
lofty one on the other, leaning and pared.
The creator of Things—what intent
heaping these on the cliff's eastern incline?
Cold-slippery, no human traces,
moss-dotted like flowered notepaper.
I come and climb to the peak top,
look down on an unfathomable abyss.
Eyes giddy, hands-feet trembling,
not daring to lower my head and look.
Winds arise from beneath the rocks,
pressing humans and striking upwards;
my clothes resemble bird feathers,
opening-extending, about to fly aloft.
Soaring-soaring, peaks on three sides—
pointed peaks, a series of single and double edged swords;
oft-oft white clouds passing,
opening rifts to reveal azure skies.

When the sun falls in the northwest
the evening glow is round, round red.
A thousand li beyond a green folding screen
a downward-running pellet of cinnabar sands.
When the moon rises in the southeast,
the evening air is clear unending.
Hundreds of feet to the base of jade-green lake,
a sketched-out yellow plate of gold.
River's color indigo-like,
day and night, long flow-flow,
turning round, revolving about the mountain.
Looking down, it is like a blue-green ring;
sometimes it spreads as a lenient flow,
sometimes is roused as a rushing torrent.
Clear profound in the deepest places,
outward flowing scaly dragon saliva.
Inclining my body to enter its midst,
suspended stone bridge, most dangerous and difficult.
Grasping creepers, trodding down-crooked branches;
going down I drive away stream-drinking gibbons,
snow-speckled rising white herons,
brocade-fluttering startled red carp.
Setting to rest, I then wash hands, rinse mouth,
cleanse out the fatigue in my limbs.
Deep or shallow, both can be seen through;
it can illuminate brain and liver.
I only want clearly to see its depths,
want to seek but do not know the source.

East Cliff abounds in rocks unusual
(like) piled-up tiles, jade like stones,
warm moist appearing on the outside,
hoarding within their beautiful gems.
Pien Ho (the jade discover) dead so long,
good jade is mostly cast aside;
at times it divulges a brightness and sparkle,
which at night links it with moon and stars.
On the highest peak of the central slope,
heaven-supporting bamboos of green jade.
Brindled rats can't ascend,
so how can I climb and scale it?
Above, there is a pond of white lotuses,
white corollas covering pure waves.
I hear its name but cannot reach it,
for the place is not in the realm of Man.

Moreover, there is one rock
large as a square-foot tile
inserted above a half cliff,
below it suspended measureless sheer walls.
It is said there was once a teacher,
who sitting here got the non-life realization.
It was called Heart-Settling Rock;
monk-elders transmitted to disciples for generations.
Withdrawing, I ascend and visit the Shrine of Immortals,
creeping grasses spreading endlessly.
Anciently, I hear, a Prince Immortal¹⁵
ascended wing-converted to Heaven.
West of it, the Terrace of Drying Herbs
still facing fields of fungi and thistle.

In time again a night of bright moon.
Hearing above the (Immortal-ridden) yellow crane's voice,
I turn and seek the Hall of Painted Dragons.
Two old men, spotted beards and hair;
thinking they see and hear the Holy Doctrine,
gladdened-joyed they make obeisance at the altar.
Again I return beneath a cave of streams,
converted into a dragon wriggling tortuous,
before the steps there is a stone hole;
about to rain, white smoke arises.

There was once a sutra-writing priest,
body quiet, heart fine and concentrated.
Affected by him were pigeons beyond the clouds,
flying in with a thousand flutterings.
They come to add to the inkstone water,
going to suck up a neath-cliff stream.
One day thrice back and forth,
little deviation from the appointed time.
The sutra completed, he was called the Holy Monk
and his disciples were named Difficulty-Raisers.
Chanting this Hymn of the Lotus Blossom,
so replete in number (of words) as to be countless.
His body spoiled but his mouth unspoiled,
the root of his tongue like a red lotus;
today his skull is not to be seen,
but a stone case (with his bones) exists.
On a white wall there is Wu (Tao-tzu's) painting,
brush strokes and color with the freshness of old.
On a white screen there is Ch'u (Sui-liang's) calligraphy,
black color as if it has newly dried.
The spirit realm and its rare traces;
looking everywhere, with nothing unexplored.

One excursion—five days and nights,
about to return but still lingering.
I am originally a man of the mountains,
mistakenly dragged in by the net of the times.
Dragged in and directed, caused to read,
pushed and pulled, ordered to imitate officials.
I had already passed the written tests,
and further disgraced as Admonitioner.
Stupid and direct, I didn't fit in with the times;
of no benefit, like a parasitic consumer.
Because of this, ashamed and apprehensive,
worried-worried, often pleasure-stinted,
non-achieving, heart and vigor exhausted,
not yet old, form and bones decayed.

Now I remove official hairpins and girdle,
first feel I have left grief and melancholy.
Getting to ramble about mountain and river,
finally able to be remiss and useless as I please.
The wild deer breaks the confining fetters,
walking and running without restraining ties;
the fish in the pond is released to the ocean;—
once gone, when will it return?
My body wears the dress of the recluse,
my hand grasps a volume of the Chuang-tzu.¹⁶
Finally coming to this mountain to live,
rejecting forever mundane world causation.
I am now more than forty,
withdrawn hereon till my body ends.
If I hope for seventy,
I can still have thirty years.

Chapter 8 Seasonal Poems: The Autumnal Mood

There are more than two hundred poems in the "moved-to-sorrow" category and, except for twenty-eight selections composed in accord with New Music Bureau forms, all are written in the old five-character poem form. Someone once made the discerning comment that Po Chü-i was a poet of autumn;¹ the autumnal mood certainly dominates these poems, so tinged with melancholy. The poet never forgets that the sum of being is illness, old age, and death; in his view, autumn symbolizes the decay and withering away of man and Nature before Time's silent onslaught. The flower killed in autumn will revive next spring, but where are the friends of yesteryear? In the early evening, at the beginning of autumn of 807, he rode along the banks of the Serpentine in Ch'ang-an's southeast corner:

Early coolness clearness after-coming,
remnant heat, darkness comes and scatters.
About to rejoice that the fiery heat is consumed,
again sighing at the change of the seasons.
I am thirty-six in years,
have newly passed half of seventy.
You should still face the wine and laugh;
don't give way to sighs at the approaching breeze.

He was living in Ch'ang-an at the time, lodged in the Forbidden Palace:

The wind turns over red-lined curtains,
the cold rain penetrates officially-provided pillows.

Restless, my back to the sloping lantern;
my bed in autumn, sleeping alone.

He returned to the Serpentine in early autumn a year later, again to reflect poetically on the contrast between the easy diminishment and decline of youth and the inexhaustibility of the sun's rays:

Man's longevity is not mountain-like;
the illumination of his years is swifter than a river.

He was working at the Hanlin Academy in 808 when the sounds of the cicadas in the palace area reminded him of seasonal change:

The palace cassias have autumn intent;
evening breeze, flowers scattered in disorder.

He thought of his close friend Wang Chih-fu, who was then living away from the capital in the Mountain to Which Immortals Frolic:

There is only recluse Wang
who knows I remember the white clouds;
what day to the Temple to Which Immortals Frolic,
to see you in autumn before the lake?

In autumn he felt a communion with the decaying, soon-to-be-forgotten red peonies:

A late grove, white dew at eve;
decayed leaves, cool breeze at morn.
Its red beauty long has faded,
its green fragrance now also gone.
The man of solitude sits facing them,
at heart sharing their lone desolation.

He returned to the Serpentine in the autumn of 810, there to reveal his seasonal thoughts as had the ancient P'an Yüeh in an ode called "Autumn's Flourishing".² Here is how he expressed himself at the Serpentine, moved by autumn:

Land of sandy grasses in the new rain,
willow branches by the bank in the cool wind.
Three years moved by autumn thoughts,
all at the pond of the Serpentine.
Early, the cicadas already cried; late, the lotuses again scattered.
Thoughts of the two past autumns
arise at this time, one after the other.
The ancient (Po Yüeh) at thirty-two
already spoke of sadness in "Autumn's Flourishing".
I am now about to be forty;
my autumn thoughts can also be known.
Years and months aren't set in vain;
this body decays with the days.
Secretly aging, personally unaware (of it);
proceeding directly to produce white hair.

His reaction to an autumn day a year later, in 811, makes it clear that on reaching the forties (by Chinese reckoning) he felt that the spring of life had ended and that he was at the threshold of old age:

Autumn Day

The pond a water remnant scattered lost,
beneath a window the sun about to set.
Waving-waving, muchness of the autumn breeze,
cassia blossoms half-producing seeds.
Below there's a man who stands alone,
his years coming to forty-one.

On a journey, the melancholy of autumn was intensified by thoughts of home. Even under thirty he was poignantly aware of the aging process:

I already feel the sudden quickness of the years,
again hurt by the faded fallenness of things.
Who can not be pained and saddened?
Heaven's time pulls at man's emotions.

He directed his poetic inquiry to a Buddhist disciple:

I venture to ask a Disciple of the Empty Gate
which dharma is easy to cultivate and practise,
to cause me to forget my heart,
not to cause feelings of vexation to arise.

He was travelling in the late autumn of 800, returning home:

Beneath the bright travelling lamp
I grieve much and seldom sleep.
Village thoughts, treasuring an early start,
setting out before the cock's cry.
In the ninth month grass and trees fall,
level fields are linked with distant mountains.
Autumn's shade harmonizes with dawn's light,
trees ten thousand are green-green.
Last autumn I wandered eastward,
but this autumn I journey westwards (home).
My horse is emaciated, my clothes torn,
separated from my family for two years.
Thinking of returning, returning sadly,

returning without a cent in my purse.
Though my heart lacks orchid fragrance,
how can I not be at ease?

"Orchid fragrance" alludes to the disappearance of orchids with the cooler weather. In a poem written about the same time, called "Autumn Feelings", fragrant orchids are the last in a series of natural phenomena: "The moon appears, illuminating the northern courtyard, and light resplendent fills the steps beneath. A cool breeze arrives from the west; grasses and trees decay day and night. T'ung (tree) and willow diminish their green shade, fragrant orchids reduce their jade nourishment:

Moved by things, I think to myself:
My heart is also like this.
How can I get to extend youthful vigor?
Thriving and decay are pressed by Heaven's time.
Man's life is like stone-to-ashes;
to enjoy he is always painfully slow.

Life is but a fleeting moment, concludes the poet, a moment which man fails to enjoy to the fullest. A type of plum blossom becomes one of the poet's concerns; while it is presently numerous and of a beautiful intense blackness, this "one among the flowers with thoughts" quickly decays and falls easily. So the poet pities it and expresses his pity in verse:

Tree small, blossoms fresh and elegant;
perfume clustered, branches soft and weak.
Its height is two or three feet,
layer on layer, calyxes in myriads.
Morning beauty, luxuriously thriving;
evening faded, scattered unknown.
Declining branches, red-powdered fineness,
covering earth with fine red silk.
From the start, fine facial color,
oft-distressed, easily melted fused.
Don't you see the marsh grass blossoms?
The wild wind blows, they (still) don't fall.

The poet, who must have been referring obliquely to people as well as blossoms, thus observed that the beautiful and fine perish while the coarse and ugly last. Alone in the south in 816, away from the capital on official service, he described a new autumn scene:

The west wind whirls a leaf;
before the yard, wind gusts cool.
Wind and pond, bright moon and water,
decayed lotuses lodging white dew.
What to do with the Kiangnan night?
Drawn-drawn out, long from now on.

In 817 he was assisting the Governor in Chiang-chou, also called Hsün-yang. There he left a traveller by the river on a day of autumn rain and conjured up a Chinese painting in verse:

Autumn geese pass, one after another;
plaintive monkeys heard night and morn.
This day a traveller in a lone boat
at this place parts from the mass.
Drizzle-drizzling rain soaks dress,
careless-uncaring sail braves clouds.
If one doesn't get tipsy on Hsün-yang wine,
mist and waves will kill with melancholy.

Encountering an autumn moon during this period, when he was living in demotion away from either capital or native home, reinforced a mood sleepless sad:

Autumn Moon

Night's start—color azured;
night's depth—light unbounded.
Slightly turning beneath west corridor,
gradually filling before south window.
How much more so green wastelands,
here again purely exposed to Heaven.
Falling leaf sounds—pitter-pattering;
startled bird shadows—fluttering-fluttering.
Roosting birds still not settled in;
how can the man of melancholy sleep?

On an autumn evening, alone, he wrote that he and his quarters were unkempt:

Autumn Evening

Leaf sounds fall like rain,
moon color white like frost.
Night's deep, I just lie alone—
who will wipe my dusty bed for me?

The autumn season to the traveller was a saddening time of nature laid waste:

Evening Rain

I have someone I think about,
separated in a distant village;
I have something I'm moved by,
rooted in my innermost self.
The village is distant, I can't go there,
there is no day that I don't longingly gaze.
How much more so this night, the lamp so low;
my emotions deep set, I can't resolve them.
There is no night that I don't reflect,
in an empty courtyard sleeping alone.
An autumn day especially, not yet bright,
wind and rain so utterly dark.
If I don't study the ways of release,³
how can I forget my full heart of former lives?

The coming of autumn signified wintry days ahead. Autumn clothes had to be washed and winter clothes readied, but in 811 Po's wife was beset by illness and his family was caught unprepared:

Clear Autumn Sky

Gold and fire wait not for each other;
hot and cool change within a rain.
The forest clears, there are remnant cicadas;
nest cold, there are no remaining swallows.
Song-immersed, I roll up the long mat;
pained-sad, I collect the round fan.
By evening it is somewhat unmuddy;
leisurely I stroll to the green moss courtyard.
The moon appears. Stone and club (for clothes-beating) move;
family after family pound autumn silks.

My oft-ill wife who faces it alone
cannot control needle and thread.
Winter clothes especially not yet made,
summer clothes about to come apart.
How can one therefore welcome early autumn?
By relying on a cup for self-encouragement.

In late autumn, he stood by a lake in the south, thinking about his brothers, likewise separated by distance and strange terrain, and contrasted the thoughts of the viewer with the inevitability of the scene:

A Southern Lake in Late Autumn

The eighth month. White dew falls,
the lake water's fragrant (blossoms) age.
Day and night the autumn winds are many,
decaying lotuses half tip and fall.
My hands grasp the green maple tree,
my feet trod the yellow reeds.
Sad and pale—old-looking face;
cold fallen—autumn's cherished embrace.
There's an older brother in Huai-ch'u,
there's a younger brother on Shu Road.
Ten thousand li—when will they come?
Smoke and ripples white vast-vast.

He grieved not only for blood relatives but for distant friends:

North Garden

North Garden—east wind rises,
flowers varied open in sequence.
Heart knowing they'll fall in an instant,
in one day I come three or four times.
Neath the flowers, how without wine?
About to drink, again I hesitate,
thoughts distant a thousand li
who will urge me to the cup?

Autumn in 817 moved him to thoughts of Yüan Chen; it was a year when both were serving in demotion and transfer beyond the capital. The "white seagull" refers to Po, whose surname means "white", flying alongside the rivers and lakes in Chiang-chou, the "green phoenix" to Yüan: "Below the leaves, lakes and also waves—autumn breezes come at this time. Who knows my heart, crying fallen? First I take in the spirit of the soughing wind:

Expulsion and change—I am moved by the flowing years.
Floating and drifting—I think of my comrade.
Formerly associated in (palace) mist-and-clouds,
now an official on the muddy paths (of demotion).
The white seagull's skin and feathers are weak,
the green phoenix's writings differ (from the norm).
Each is enclosed in a cage;
at year end each is grief-haggard.

There was a type of hibiscus, the blossoms of which were believed to open and fade on a single autumn day. This remainder of life's transiency and of the human spring's non-return inspired the poet to a sentiment encompassing man and Nature:

Autumn Hibiscus

Wind and dew gusts already cold,
Heaven's color also a dusk yellow.
The central court has a hibiscus blossom,
flourishing and falling on a single morn.
Autumn starts. There is already solitude,
evening deaths so scattering-scattered!
I truly pity its short(-lived) facial color,
sigh again that it does not make its round.

Moved by this, then I think of that.
Feelings! Let me try once to explain:
Men getting aged, wealthy and eminent,
women in their twilight becoming brides.
Hair white, one first gets one's will;
color decaying, then one can serve man.
Time's oncoming cannot be helped;
how can one ever get to be like verdant spring?

In 822, when Po was in his fifty-first year, he wrote two poems about his sentiments as he stood one autumn day by the Serpentine. In a preface to the poems, he mentioned his earlier compositions of 806, 807, and 808, similarly called "Moved by Autumn at the Serpentine". He spoke of demotions and transfers, and went on to say that once more he frolicked by the Serpentine; the autumn scene was unchanged, but human events had altered. He said he had been unfortunate in his middle carrer but fortunate afterwards. Once robust, he was now decayed. Life was mostly hindrance, and from one autumn to the next one knew not what to expect. To end-rhyme the first and third lines, the poet used the numbers "thirty-seven" (san-shih ch'i) and "fifty-one" (wu-shih i), but the gap of years between 806 and 822 was sixteen rather than fourteen. Here the discrepancy between actual chronology and the poet's chronology may be attributed to the exigencies of rhyme:

At the Serpentine, Moved by Autumn

The First Poem

The autumn of 806
I was thirty-seven;
the autumn of 822
I am fifty-one.
Of the fourteen years between,
six I lived reprimanded-degraded.
Impoverishment-success and glory-fame
entrust to fate and accord with externals.

"I consequently took as my commander (the monk Wisdom-)Distant of Mount Lu, and consoled (the poet-worthy) of antiquity Ch'u (Yüan) at the Hsiang River. Nights, I listened to the melancholy of bamboo branches; autumn, I saw the submerging of the tributary, blocking (a view of the peaks). Recently I have taken leave of the official seal of Pa Commandery, and again I grasp a Secretariat writing brush:

Late good fortune; how is it worth talking about?
My white hair reflects on the red sash—
melted and sunk the former thoughts and spirit,
changed and altered the old looks and substance.
There is only autumn at the Serpentine,
wind and mist as in days before.

Here in middle age he showed a resignation to life and career, expressing no wish to return to the mountains:

The Second Poem

Grasses of the weed-scattered southern bank,
trees in the soughing-gusting western wind.
Autumn has come; not very long
but cicada sounds already infrequent.
Sedge grasses level, joined by green luxuriance;
lotuses fall, their green seeds exposed.
This day when I approach and look,
the moved-by-autumn place of years past.
The water in the pond as of old,
the mountains above the city as before.

Only the hairs among my temple,
formerly black but now suspending white.
Glory fame and robust vigor
shun one another like the day the night.
When timely fate is first about to come,
one's aging looks have already preceded it.
If in facing spring one doesn't enjoy and rejoice,
on approaching old age one is merely alarmed misinformed.
Therefore, I compose singing-of-emotion poems,
inscribing them on the road by the Serpentine.

He lamented not only the passing of the seasons but the fact that flowers bloomed but a moment, year after year:

Separated by a river bank, I love the red lotus;
yesterday I saw it still there.
Night came; the wind blew it down,
only once could I pluck it.
For flowers to bloom,
though there is next year's time,
I'll grieve again next year
that they are here such a little while.

There was all too little time and, once gone, nowhere for beauty to be found:

Flower-non-Flower

Flower-non-flower
mist-non-mist.
Midnight coming,
daylight leaving,
coming like a spring dream
for how much time?
Leaving like a morning cloud,
nowhere to be sought.

The poet associated autumn with death and desolation:

Late Autumn Evening

Jade-green sky deep full, moon resplendent quiet;
within the moon(-glow) a man sad,
mourning his orphaned shadow.
The flowers open, the last chrysanthemums
lean on the distant bamboo fence;

leaves drop off the decaying t'ung tree,
falling into the cold well.
Frontier geese fly; of a sudden I realize autumn's end.
The neighbor's cock cries late; I know nights are long.
Emotions crystallized, I don't speak but
emptily have my thoughts.
The wind blows the white dew,
cold my garments.

Autumn Evening

Chrysanthemums few along the fence,
t'ung leaves fallen along the steps.
Tree shadows separate-apart,
day color thin.
Single-fold coarse hanging screen,
poor and solitary.
Cool winds scattered—fallen,
autumn's lonely desolation.
Light and shade flow about,
suddenly it is late.

My facial color's faded shadow
isn't up to that of yesterday.
Lai's wife⁴ lies sick,
the time of moon brightness.
He doesn't pound the cold clothes
but vainly pounds drugs instead.

Po chü-i communed with Nature and, distressed by decay, took delight in the nourishing of growing things. This was one of the pleasures amidst distress which compensated for his failures in the maze of officialdom. He was partial to the newly planted bamboo!

As a district magistrate, my mind isn't at ease;
closing my gates, the autumn grasses grow.
How can I therefore amuse my rustic nature?
By planting more than a hundred bamboo stalks.
Seeing this color on the valley
I can recover an in-mountain feeling.
Official affairs at times at rest,
I stroll daylong about the balustrades.
Do not say the roots are still unfirm,
do not say the shade is still unproduced;
I already feel within the garden
somewhat of a lingering breeze.
I love most to lie near the window;
branches in the autumn wind have sounds.

Po felt official work accumulating while he attended to garden chores, and he likened himself to a leaden knife, meaning a man of little talent. The bamboo appealed with its whispered coolness, the moon attracted as a symbol of purity aloof from the strife below:

Forbidden Palace Moon

On the waters, the bright moon appears;
in the palace, the clear night lengthens.
Southeast, terraces and temples (moon-) whitened,
little by little it ascends palace walls.
Purified, it falls into the waters of the golden dikes,
brightly flowing on the frost of the jade tiles.
It can't be compared to sights in the mundane realm
(where) dusty earth dirties its purity and glow.

In 820, while living in Szechwan, Po wrote the following poem on the occasion of the Double Yang, or Double Nine festival. Celebrating the festival in a distant place reinforced the homesickness and anxiety of the weary traveller: "The sorghum-fragrant wine is first heated, the chrysanthemums warm, blossoms (in the heated wine) opened. Leisurely listening to the "Song of the Bamboo Branches",⁵ lightly pouring wine into dogwood cups. (Dogwood supposedly protected one from evil.) Last year on Double Yang I was floating-drifting in a nook of P'en City; this year on Double Yang I am lone-scattered on Pa-tzu Terrace. The traveller's temples whitened, the letters from home long uncome; approaching the goblet, one scratch of my head (in anxiety) and the seated guests also become irresolute (out of sympathy for my homesick plight)…"

The poet heard the rain on an autumn evening before he saw it:

Evening Rain

The early cricket cries and then ceases,
the flickering lamp goes out and again brightens.
A window apart, I know the night's rain;
the plaintain leaf first had its sounds.

He was sensitive to the life-awakening of early spring, revived by the coming of warmth. Oblivious to food, he viewed the wonders of nature:

Early Spring in the Creek

Southern mountain snows not entirely gone,
shaded peaks leaving a remnant white.
Ice of the western valley stream already melted;
spring's water current containing new jade-green.

"The coming of the eastern breeze—how many days? Hibernating insects move, sprouting grasses open. Secretly I am aware of spring's harmonizing merit, not flinging itself about emptily for (even) a day. I love the warmth of this day's weather, and come to brush off the stones beside the creek. Once I sit, I am about to forget to return; the chirp-chirp sound of night birds. Raspberry and artemisia apart from mul-berry and jujube, hidden reflections on a smoky night. Returning home, when I ask about the evening meal the domestic is boiling greens and wheat."

When spring's coolness gave way to summer's heat, Po might find the day somewhat tedious and a noon-time nap needed to while away the lengthened hours:

Sleeping at Noon

Sitting and straightening white unlined garments,
rising and wearing yellow grass sandals.
Morning meal, basin washing, and rinsing completed,
I leisurely go down the stairs and walk ahead.
The hot breeze slightly changes time periods,
noontime gradually adding to its frequency.
The yard is quiet, the ground shaded,
birds sing on trees with new leaves.

Alone I walk and, returning, alone lie down;
summer's scenes especially have not yet dimmed.
If I don't have a noontime nap,
how can I pass the long day?

Po was a great admirer of the pine, which he associated with stateliness and with splendor in nature, aloof and unobserved. The pine symbolized personal control, constancy in adversity, and grandeur.⁶ Po presented a short verse to a pine tree seller in Ch'ang-an, explaining why he declined to purchase a tree for transplanting:

A bundle of green, green color;
I know it comes from the valley floor.
How many days since they were dug up?
Leaves and branches fill the world of dust.
In not buying I've no other reason than that;
there is no capital land on which to plant.

He wrote two poems about planting a pine:

The First Poem

A small pine, not yet a foot high,
heart-loving, I transplanted with my own hands.
Its color the greenness neath the mountain stream,
cloud-moistened and light-misted.
To plant and cultivate, my years are late;
to grow and mature, your nature is slow.
How could I have passed forty (before)
planting these few inches of branches?
Will I get to see it produce shade?
Human life rarely (reaches) seventy.

The Second Poem

Beloved—you cherish a late integrity;
pitiful—you contain a straight pattern.
Wishing I could see you morn after morn,
I therefore planted you before the steps.
I know if you die there is no more to be said;
but if you don't, you'll aspire to the clouds.

Just as he heard the rain before he saw it, so did he first feel the snow through its glow and effect on nature:

Night Snow

Startled by the cold of coverlet and pillow,
I then note the brightness of the window.
Night-deep, I know the snow is heavy—
I hear the sound of snapping bamboo.

Po, living in lonely officialdom in 820 in Szechwan, an area he thought uncivilized, planted flowers at the eastern slope, the slope east of the city. Su Shih, a Sung poet and admirer of Po Chü-i, was said to have adopted the sobriquet of Tung-p'o⁷ ("Eastern Slope") out of admiration for the following two poems:

Planting Flowers at the Eastern Slope

The First Poem

I took money to buy flowers and trees,
planted them on the east-of-city slope;
but the flowers which I bought
were not limited to peach, apricot, and plum.
A hundred fruits were mixed-planted,
a thousand branches opened in orderly sequence.
By Heaven's time there is early and late,
but Earth's power lacks high and low.
The red were rosy-hued, charming-voluptuous,
the white were snow's pure white.
Frolicking bees therefore remained,
and fine birds also came to perch.
In front were long flowing waters,
below was a small level terrace.
I brushed off rocks on the terrace,
raised my cup before the breeze.

Blossoms and branches shaded my head,
flower stamens fell to my bosom.
Drinking alone and singing alone,
before I realized (it) the sun levelled in the west.
It is the Szechwan custom not to love flowers
and throughout the spring no one comes;
there is only this drunken Governor,
unable to turn away from them.

The Second Poem

At the eastern slope spring faces eve.
What are the flowers and trees like today?
All around, the flowers have fallen.
Everywhere the death of the leaves has begun.
Daily, I lead my lads and servants
in carrying hoes to clear the ditches.
We smooth earth and bank up its roots,
draw from streams and irrigate its witheredness.
The small trees are a few feet low,
the large trees more than ten feet long.
Heaping earth and planting how many times?
The heights even, (plants) spread luxuriously.

Nourishing trees is like this,
to nourish people what difference?
If you truly wish
abundant branches and leaves,
first you must save the roots and trunks.
If you say,
"How does one save the roots and trunks?",
it is by encouraging farming,
by equalizing levies and taxes.
If you say,
"How does one (make) abundant the branches and leaves?",
it is by economizing on things,
by leniently punishing and penalizing.
I have transferred these (principles) to my commandery rule
and have almost completely revived the inhabitants.

The first of the poems on planting flowers at the eastern slope has been described as one in which the poet, while discussing his interests in planting, quietly looked into the principles of things. To the poet there was the inner meaning of cultivating personal goodness. The second poem enlarges on this theme in a didactic sense, for in governing through adherence to right principles, a stable and prosperous community can be realized. The poems may perhaps also be consid ered in the "moved-to-sorrow" category, because Po felt frustrated in his official career and was only able to use a portion of his talents for governing the empire.

In 802 he described the planting of willows near a mountain stream as consolation for having to serve far from the center of the official, intellectual world:

My rustic nature loves to tend and plant,
to plant willows in a water-midst inlet.
Spring profiting, I take an axe to cut,
cut short and then plant them.
Since long and short are not uniform,
they're high or short according to location.

Relying on the bank, I bury great trunks,
overlooking the stream insert small branches.
Pines and poplars cannot wait,
assuredly are hard to shift.
It is best to plant these (willow) trees,
for these trees easily flourish and increase.
Rootless, they also can survive;
producing shade, how unslow they are!

Three years I have now left the commandery;
I can therefore see them close-cleaving.
Planting finished, I rest by the waterside;
lifting my head, I leisurely think to myself.
Wealth and eminence are basically unhoped for,
merit and fame must await the times.
If I didn't plant east stream willows,
I'd sit erect and—what would I wish for?

He sought the sun on a day in 822, to bask in its rays and escape the confines of thought:

Bright-bright the winter's sun appears,
illuminating the south corner of my home.
Seeking its warmth, close-eyed I sit;
harmonious vapors arise on flesh and skin.
At first, it's like drinking heady wine,
like the revival of the hibernating.
It outwardly blends—my every bone is pervaded;
It inwardly pleases—(even) one thought is lacking.
(In an) expanded state I forget where I am;
my heart joins with the empty and the void.

He bought a house near a group of pines in 822, explaining in verse why he had moved:

Courtyard Pines

What is there below the courtyard? Ten pines meet me at the stairs. They stand chaotically with no order in arrangement, heights uneven. High ones thirty feet long, low ones ten feet low. They are like field-begotten things, like nothing planted by man. They make contact (above) through a green tiled room, receiving (below) at a white sand terrace. Day and night there is wind and moon; bubbling over and moist (from the rains), there is no dust or mud. Remote harmony (of wind in pines), autumn falling leaves; cool shade, summer cold-aloof. Spring is deep; a slight evening rain, filling trees with suspended pearls. At year end a great snowy day, pressing branches with jade pure white. The four seasons each have interest; the myriad trees are not in their category.

Last year I bought this house,
often was laughed at by people;
but one family and twenty mouths
moving-shifting and going to (these) pines,
what was gained from the move?
Merely the unravelling of a troubled heart.
Since these are beneficial friends,
why must I associate with worthy talents?
Look at me: I am just a common pėrson,
official cap and sash trailing in the dust.
Not yet called a Master of Pines,
(from) time to time I feel ashamed.

To the Chinese, the bamboo is associated with peace and tranquillity.⁸ In 822 Po reminisced about the bamboo he had once seen at a temple in Wang-ch'uan, Shensi, known as the "Temple of the Pure Source." He concluded the poem with a reference from his fourth-century predecessor T'ao Yüan-ming (the "man of ages past") about the pleasures of reclining exceeding pleasures enjoyed by the most famous of the ancient Sages:

The Window of Bamboos

I used to love the temple at Wang-ch'uan,
the window of bamboos in the northeast corridor.
Once separated, it has been more than ten years,
(but if) I see the bamboos I won't have forgotten them.
It is now the start of spring's second month;
I'm living at New Glories Ward (in Ch'angan),
in a dwelling attained through divination.
Not yet free to make stable and storehouse,
I planned first besides to build a courtyard.
Opening the window, I didn't paste paper;
planting bamboos, I didn't rely on a pathway.

My intent was to take (the area) under the northern eaves
and there position window and bamboos.
Enveloping the room, the sound wind-sighed;
pressing against man, the color green-green.
Mist penetrated lovely deep clouds;
moon passed through the elegant openwork glow.

The time was the third stage of (summery) days,
with Heaven's vapors as hot as boiling water.
On returning from court I removed my garments.
A light gauze turban of a width (of cloth),
a small mat, six-foot bed.
No guests. Quiet throughout the day,
there was a cool breeze all night.
I then knew the man of ages past
in speaking of things was most knowledgeable.
"A clear breeze—lying under the northern window,
one can thereby excel (Fu-)hsi the August."⁹

He enjoyed associating with pine and bamboo, the traditional substitutes for absent friends:

Playing With Pine and Bamboo

The First Poem

Dragons and snakes hide in great swamps,
tailed and tailless deer frolic in luxuriant grasses.
The nesting phoenix rests in the wu tree,
the concealed fish rejoices in aquatic grasses.
I also love my thatched hut,
in its midst rejoicing in my ways.
Pines in front, tall bamboo behind—
sleeping and lying I can end my days.
Each attached to its own tranquil place,
unaware of the good of other things.

The Second Poem

Seated before the beloved front eaves,
lying north of the beloved north window.
The window of bamboos—mostly a fine breeze;
the pines of the eaves have excellent coloring.
Cherishing solitude, combining with them as one,
common thoughts accord with greenness and cease.
Though to you they have no feelings,
to me they can be gotten through to.

I then realize that closeness in nature
is not necessarily (only) movement and planting.

Po chü-i was more optimistic about the state of nature, which renewed in spring, than about the state of man. To man, spring was not recoverable and life was uncertain and arbitary. The poet elaborated on the chance nature of things in two poems. In the first, he contrasted historical events and the ways in which worthy officials were mistreated. In conclusion, he alluded to a popular belief about rain falling when the moon was apart from the constellation of Hyades:

Perchance: Two Poems

(Prince) Huai of Ch'u was chaotic and perverse,
Ch'u Yüan was straight-forward;
for him to be rejected and abandoned was fitting and natural.
Why should one feel pity and commiseration?
Han The Cultured (Emperor) was an enlightened Sage,
Mr. Chia (I) was virtuous;
(for Chia) to be banished to Ch'ang-sha
(is therefore) worthy of one's sighs.
Human events have many extremes;
how can they be worth marvelling at?
Heaven's patterns are extremely trustworthy,
still they differ (from the expected).

When the moon is apart from the Hyades,
it is fitting for showers,
but there are times when it does not rain.
Who can predict (such things)?

The second of the two poems mentions a popular superstition—which the poet accepted unquestioningly—that a wily dragon lodged in the neck of an ox could cause its death in times of thunder. There are references to integral parts of the divination process, such as milfoil stalks, tortoise bones, hexagrams, and analyses:

Fire starts at the top of the city,
the fish are in the water.
To rescue (all) from the fire,
the pond is exhausted;
the fish lose their water.

A wily dragon is concealed
in an ox's neck.
When thunder beats, the dragon comes,
the ox dies of madness.

People say the milfoil stalks are godly,
the tortoise bones divinely efficacious.
If we try divination,
how do fish and oxen get to (such deaths)?
There are hexagrams sixty-four, analyses seventy,
but in the end one can't know the reasons.

Chapter 9 Aging and Death

Po chü-i, very conscious of aging, inclined towards a belief expressed in the Chuang-tzu that one could reach a state of transcendental bliss:¹

Neither do I dote on this body,
nor do I detest this body.
This body—how is it worth doting on?
Time beyond time the root of trouble vexation.
This body—how is it worth detesting?
One collection of the dust of emptiness and void.
Not doting on and not detesting—
here first is the man of bliss transcendental.

Fully aware of the lessening of sensation with the onset of age, he lamented his sickness and decay. Explaining that he was of little use to the court, he asked for a simple and non-demanding post somewhere in the mountains:

Decaying-Sick and Devoid of Interest
I Then Sing of my Feelings

Morning meals mostly not eaten to the full,
lying down evenings, often little sleep.
I realize the interval from eating to sleeping
lacks entirely the flavor of youth.
Ordinarily I like poetry and wine,
but I am about to forsake and abandon them.
Wine I drink only like medicine,
without recovering past joys of tipsiness.
Poetry I mostly listen to others sing,
myself not inscribing a single word.

My sick appearance and decayed looks
day and night in succession arrive.
Now, moreover, I seldom fulfill court duties,
gradually shame at close attending (the Throne).
I should finally seek a commandery post,
collecting the few expenses of a fisherman or woodcutter.
Assembling the family, I'd return to the mountains,
to ask not about things in the realm of man.

He not only pitied his own ill state but also the illnesses of others. In the late autumn of 810, he received a poem while in the capital from the ill official Chang Chi (c. 765-830), and responded in kind. (The reference to "double-south" gold was to a form of southern gold valued at twice the normal rate):²

Your elevated talents are concealed at the Temple of Rites,
my short feathers hover about the forbidden (palatial) forest.
Your residence on a western street is far,
my northern tower is deep with officials.
You are sick and don't come to visit,
I am busy and it's hard to go to seek you.
Uneven all the days of our parting,
lonely desolate hearts passing the years.

The dew moistens green mossy earth,
the moon chills the red tree shade.
Moreover, this night of lone melancholy
I hear his song of thinking of me.

Above, it sighs at obstruction from our words and laughter;
below, it grieves at the inroads of the years.
The form—deteriorating—the dawn window's mirror;
the thoughts—distressed—the lute of autumn sounds.

It is a piece of silk brocade,
a beautiful jade sound in eight rhymes.
How should one reward the precious and esteemed?
Ashamed am I that I lack double-south gold.

Since to Po white hairs and advancing age were synonymous terms, the sight of a white hair among the black let loose a flood of personal reflection in which we see the poet at his appealing best, sharing his feelings directly with the reader in a one-to-one relationship and talking both to himself and to the men of his own and all generations. He wrote the first poem in his mid-thirties:

On First Seeing A White Hair

White hairs have grown one strand;
morning comes and it's in the bright mirror.
Don't say one strand's few—
the whole head starts from this.
Green mountains—just having distantly parted;
yellow dress—first having gone to serve.
I never realized that among my locks
in no time at all it would be like this.

The second poem was written when he was thirty-eight:

At night I wash, early next morning comb my hair;
window bright, autumn mirror at dawn.
Decaying, the hairs I grasp in my hand—
with one washing I know they have gotten less.

Yearly matters gradually slip and stumble by,
worldly affinities just wind me about.
I don't study the way of the Gate of Emptiness;³
old age and illness—how to be comprehended?
I haven't gotten the non-birth heart;
white hair is for me an early death.

When he wrote about white hairs at the age of forty, he seemed more resigned to them philosophically and closer to a "non-birth heart" mentality:

White Hairs

White hairs, knowing their time and season,
secretly have an appointment with me.
This morning, under the sun's rays,
I combed out a few (white) strands.
My family, not used to seeing them,
are grieved and silent, pitying me.

I say "Why is it worth marvelling about?
Of its meaning you're unaware."
Most men, at the age of thirty
are strong on the outside
but already decaying inside.
They think of food and bed delights,
already lessened from when they were twenty.

Besides, I am now forty,
basic shape and form emaciated.
The book demon has muddled my two eyes,
the wine sickness immersed my four limbs.
My loved ones daily scattered and lost,
those still alive, apart and separated.

Body and heart like this for long,
white hair production is already late.
From the start, birth, old age, and death—
the three sicknesses—lengthily follow one another.
Unless one has the non-life mentality,
in the human realm there's no medicine to cure (one).

In a different mood, he complained the mirror made him look older than he really was:

Glistening the bronze mirror,
streaked the white-haired temples.
How can I get to further hide my age?
My true years, you, Sir (Mirror), don't believe.

Approaching forty, he sighed gently in three poems about the underniable fact of age. There was a reference in the first poem to Pien Ch'üeh, a famous doctor of antiquity:

Sighs Over Getting Old

The First Poem

In the morning I rise, reflected in a bronze mirror,
form and shadow lonely-forlorn.
My youth has taken leave of me,
my white hairs fall out with the comb.
The myriad changes are done with gradualness—
gradually decaying, one looks and doesn't realize (it).
But I fear that my face in the mirror
is older this morning than yesterday.

Human life seldom fulfills a hundred
and one cannot prolongedly enjoy and delight.
Who can understand the heart of Heaven and Earth?
A thousand years they give to tortoise and crane.
I have heard that one good at curing ills
is called, present and past, a "Pien Ch'Üeh".
The myriad illnesses all can be cured,
lacking only the medicine to cure old age.

The Second Poem

I have got a handful of hairs—
in controlling the comb how dense they are!
They once seemed like the sparkle of black clouds,
now they are like the color of white silk.
There is my old mirror in the case;—
about to be reflected in it,
first I deeply sigh.
Ever since the white hairs came,
I don't wish to polish (the mirror) clearly.

The cow's head and the crane's neck
are oft like ink right to old age.
There is only the hair on a man's temples
which won't stay black till the end.

The last poem in the series reminds us that life is fleeting and to be enjoyed:

The Third Poem

Last year I planted peach seeds,
this year they are flowering trees.
Last year's new infant
this year is already learning to walk.

One is only startled by the way things grow,
unaware that the body deteriorates and ages.
It's gone! Oh, how we wish otherwise;
the years of youth can't be retained.
That's why this day I've written of my feelings
to send everywhere to all my friends.
If in the years of vigor
you don't delight and enjoy,
in the declining years
you should repent and apprehend.

Po was a frequenter of the tombs, an intimate of the grave mounds who appreciated that in time the present becomes the past. The year was 813, the next poem written while in mourning at Wei Village:

Climbing to the Old Graves
East of the Village

High and low the graves of olden times;
above them sheep and oxen paths.
Alone I stand at the highest tip;
long-reaching, these feelings I cherish!
Turning my head, I look villagewards
but see only grass of uncultivated fields.
The village people don't love flowers
and plant mostly chestnut and jujube.
Since coming to live in the village,
I'm oblivious to the fineness of wine and light.
Flowers few, orioles also rare—
year after year spring ages in secret.

He presented a mirror to someone because it would reflect, not the decay which was the poet's lot in his forty-first year, but the jet-black hair of the recipient's youth:

People say it is like a bright moon;
I say it is better than a bright moon.
The bright moon is always bright,
but in a year it lacks (brightness) twelve times.
How is it comparable to (the mirror) in the jade box,
like water which is always pure and clear?
When the moon breaks through Heaven's darkness,
round and bright, it alone does not rest.

I am ashamed of the ugliness and age of my looks,
with streak on streak of snow temple-winding:
It is better to present (a mirror) to a youth
who sees reflected in it jet-black hair.
Because you are going away a thousand li,
I've brought this to you just prior to departure.

He commented that wine helped release one's encumbering hold on life and noted approvingly the behavior of Liu Ling and Juan Chi, famed Chin dynasty inebriates:

Facing Wine

Human life—a hundred years;
through calculation—thirty thousand days.
How is it, moreover,
a hundred-year-old
among humans
is not one in a hundred?

Worthy and fool fragmented—fallen together;
esteemed and humble buried—lost the same.
Ghosts before and after Sacred East Mount (Cemetery),
bones new and old at North Hill (Cemetery).

Further, I hear of those who err through herbs,
through a love for the year-extending arts.
Then there are those who worry to death,
because of the greed to write government things.
Herb-mistaken, they don't reach old age;
die not from sickness but from worrying.

Who says man is the most spiritual?
He knows how to get but not how to lose.
What's better than to assemble friends and relatives
to drink this thing within the cup?
One can pour away troubles and cares,
one can bring out one's true nature.
That is why those in the class of Liu and Juan
were steadfastly drunk throughout their years.

My black hair daily already whitened,
my white face daily already blackened.
Human life—in the interval before death,
the changes how thorough and final!
It is often said that to oneself
there is nothing (so precious) as one's form and color;
one morning, when the changes come
one cannot get them to stop and cease.
How much more so matters beyond the body
far distant, throughness and hindrance!

On Bathing

I haven't bathed for over a year—
dust and dirt fill skin and flesh.
This morning, once I bathed clean,
decay and emaciation were excessive.
Aging color, hair on the temples white,
sick frame, limbs devoid of substance.

Clothes spacious, I've a slack girdle;
hairs are few and can't sustain the comb.
I ask myself: "How old this year?
My spring and autumn at forty's start."
At forty I'm already like this—
what will I be like at seventy?

The age of forty to Po symbolized a turning point, defined in two poems entitled "Self-Realization". In the first, he noted the psychosomatic influences on aging, and in the second, he stressed the need for liberation from mental suffering and the cycle of causation by regarding the body as a floating cloud:

The First Poem

At forty, I am not yet old,
but grief and harm (bring) quick decay and evil.
Last year two white hairs produced,
this year one tooth fell out.
Frame and bones daily damaged-diminished,
heartfelt matters likewise mournful-isolated.
Night sleep and morning food—
insipid the flavor in those intervals.
Same-aged Official Secretary Ts'ui's⁴
looks sparkle, gleam and gleam.

I first realize that age and looks
decay or flourish according to griefs or joys.
Fearing age, age presses round;
worrying over illness, illness fully binds.
To neither worry nor fear,
the medicine to eliminate old age and illness.

The Second Poem

Mornings, I weep for what my heart loved;
evenings, I weep for what my heart longed for.
Intimate love ends up fragmented-fallen;
of what use is a body existing alone?

How many pleasures in an ordinary life?
limitless the favor from one's flesh and bone.
They combine to make for pains inside one,
assemble to produce the distresses of nose and head.
Grief comes, the four limbs are slowed;
tears exhausted, the two eyes are muddled.
That is why at the age of forty
my heart is like a seventy-year-old.

I hear the Doctrine of the Buddha⁵
has within it a gate of liberation.
Placing one's heart as stilled water,
seeing one's body as a floating cloud.
One shakes out dirty, unclean garments,
delivered from the wheel of life and death.

Why should one love this distress,
not leave it but still shrink back?
Reflecting, I initiate a great wish,
wishing for this body of the present.
May I merely receive the rewards of the past,
not combining (them) with future causations.

I vow to take the waters of wisdom and intelligence,
to wash away forever the dust of trouble and vexation.
Through the children of favor and love
I'll plant no more the seeds of grief and care.

T'ang poets such as Han Yü and Tu Mu⁶ referred to a custom of saying farewell to spring (on the thirtieth day of the third lunar month). Po did likewise, as moved by its passing as by the coming or going of autumn:

Seeing Off the Spring

Thirtieth day of the third month,
spring returns and days again darken—
Vexed—provoked, I ask the spring breeze,
"Shouldn't you stay over tomorrow?"

Seeing off the spring above the Serpentine,
tenderly looking back east and west.
What I see are water-fallen flowers,
confusedly, knowing not their numbers.

Human life is like a travelling guest,
with both feet never stopping.
Day after day advancing on the journey ahead,
the journey ahead—how many paths?

Soldiers and swords, floods and fires,
can all be avoided as one goes along,
but there's only the coming of old age,
which in the human realm is unavoidable.

Moved by the season, I halt for a good while,
resting alone on a tree south of the pond.
Today my heart, in seeing off the spring,
is like the heart of separating from a friend.

During the Cold Food Festival of 800⁷, he lamented the occasion with a smile of resignation. For he was ill and his loneliness was incurable. The Cold Food Festival, the only popular festival whose date was fixed according to the solar calendar (fifteen days after the spring equinox), preceded the Festival of the Dead:

Lying Sick During the Cold Food Festival

Sickness encountered on a fine day,
long my sighs.
Spring rain mist-misting,
color of the willows.
Sitting in decay,
totally without
the looks of former days.
Walking with a cane,
half-reliant
on the strength of others.
Shouting hub-hub in lanes and wards,
returning
strollers on the green.
Smiling,
I close my brushwood gates,
pass the Cold Food (Festival)
alone.

One of the poet's favorite pastimes was to drink wine while viewing the flowers. Approaching fifty and governing in a distant commandery, he wrote two poems on the subject of wine and flowers, describing homesickness and sensitive awareness of the swift passage of time. The blossoms in the first poem are euphoniously described as "concubines" and "beauties":

The First Poem

Fresh-fragrant the river vapors' spring;
Nan-pin (County in Chung-chou),
the intercalary first month.
Plum and cherry, peach and apricot
blossom sequentially above the city.
Red concubines, glistening, burst into fire,
white beauties, disorderly, spread their snow.
Fragrance—regretting it's wind-entrusted, blown about;
melancholy—bound up with pressure on and breakage of the branches.

In the bower the old Governor,
new white hairs on his head.
Cold and bleak his weary heart feelings;
warm and harmonious the good-time season.
His old home—letters and communication broken;
a distant commandery—intimates and guests cease.

He wishes to ask the wine cup neath the flowers:
on whose behalf were you created?

The Second Poem

Hands drawn forth, I pluck red cherries
and red cherries fall like sleet.
Head raised, I see a bright sun,
a bright sun running like an arrow.
The fragrance of the year,
the scenery of the times,
in a brief instant are like
decadence and change.
How much more so a blood-fleshed body!
How can one be strong and healthy for long?
Man's heart is distressed,
blindly grasping illusion,
envying the eminent,
worried about being poor and humble.
Melancholy's color often in his brows,
joyous looks don't reach his countenance.

How much more so with my head half-white!
Taking my mirror,
white hairs are everywhere to be seen;
why must the cup beneath the flowers
await any longer another's urgings?

It was better, concluded the poet, to drink alone than to wait in hopes of a drinking companion and a fellow lover of the flowers. But a most welcome companion was one who visited when the poet was ill and forlorn:

In the Midst of Illness a Friend Visits Me

Long lying down, forgetting the days.
Southern window—muddled and remuddled.
Neath lonely mourning grass eaves,
cold sparrows heard day and night;
I determinedly use a cane to lift myself from the bed,
rise and walk towards the courtyard's center.

Chancing to meet an old friend arriving,
it then becomes a welcoming encounter.
I move my couch to the slanting sun's rays,
throwing on a fur garment, leaning on a pillow.
Quietly chatting is better than taking medicine—
I feel I have somewhat (restored) heart feelings.

He sang to the sun in a mixed-line style reminiscent of the New Music Bureau odes, interspersing seven- and three-character lines:

Rising, rising, the sun the color of fire,
ascending a path of a thousand li,
descending in an instant.
When it comes out, it's bright day,
when it goes in, it's evening.
Turning round like a pearl,
it can't stay in one place—
it can't stay in one place,
what's to be done?

For you I raise the wine and sing a short song;
the song's sounds are bitter,
the words also bitter.
All you youths seated everywhere,
listen to me.
Before) this night has ended, bright dawn urges on.
Autumn's breeze has barely gone
when spring's breeze returns.
Man lacks root and stem, time doesn't halt;
rose faces wither and decay with the bright sun.

I urge you for this once to force a smile,
I urge you to force a drink of the cup.
Man's life can't be pleasure and joy prolonged;
his years are few and in an instant old age arrives.

Aging was the inescapable theme for Po CHü-i, the theme to which he turned with the advancing years:

Gradually Aging

This day and again the next—
before one realizes, age at its eve.
White hair falls with the comb,
rose face departs with the mirror.
Confronting spring, melancholy and alone;
facing the wine, little pleasure and interest.
Encountered circumstances mostly sadness and grief;
meeting people, esteem for old friends increases.
Form and substance belong to Heaven and Earth,

movement and change never cease.
To be blamed is the heart of youth,
corroding away and falling to nowhere.

At forty-five he noted that he was rapidly balding. He'd washed his hair only once in the past year, but when he did the results were so distressing he was moved to address two poems to a Buddhist monk, admitting his troubled state in one and expressing his desire to attain to the gate of release in the other. (East Temple refers to East Forest Temple at Mount Lu):

The First Poem

As years advance, one's person changes to indolence;
a hundred things and without desire.
Coming to the hair on my head,
a year passes and it's washed just once.
Washing rarely, I am distressed by falling hair—
one wash and I am half bald.
My short temple (locks)—
undergrowth that has gone through frost.
My old face—
a tree that has taken leave of spring.
I am still close to having passed the years of strength,
but how quickly the decay to my looks arrives!
It must be that with troubles and vexations many,
my heart is scorched and my blood insufficient.

The Second Poem

Gradually scarcer, not even a full handful;
gradually shorter, not even the desired height.
Moreover, in shortness and scarcity's midst,
day and night, falling out and white.

Since I lack the arts of an Immortal,
how can I eliminate
the register of old age and death?
There is only the gate of release
which can cross beyond
the difficulties of decay and distress.

Covering the mirror,
I look towards East Temple.
Submitting my heart,
I acknowledge the meditating guest.
Decaying and whitening—
why talk about these?
Shave it all off and I'd still not regret.

I also once burned the great (immortality) herbs,
(but) when I rested, the fire perversely diminished.
Coming to the present,
the remnant cinnabar
has burned dry and failed to achieve results.

Action and concealment failed both times;
worry and vexation fought together in my heart.
Casting myself into barren rusticity,
seated and seeing old age and illness press close,
I must get the King of Healers to save me.
There is only the Gate of Non-Duality,
between which there is neither early death nor longevity.

"The King of Healers" refers to the Buddha, the healer of all sufferings. "The Gate of Non-Duality" embodies a concept of the indivisibility of things; whatever appears to be dualistic actually partakes of the one nature of Buddha.

He summed up his achievements in a poem written in his forty-seventh year, saying that he had been luckier than ancient writers like Yen Hui, the short-lived disciple of Confucius, or Po I, who died of starvation. The burial grounds he alludes to in the poem were in Loyang. Though he had served in important offices, he still felt that Destiny was eluding him:

Refrain of the Great Song

Heaven is long, earth old,⁸—there is no finality or end;
last night, this morning, and again tomorrow.
Temple and hair spotted white, teeth sparse;
without realizing it I'm forty-seven years old.
How many years in all before I'm fifty?
Taking the mirror to illumine my face, heart-lost.
Since I don't have a long rope
to bind the bright sun
and also lack immortality herbs
to arrest my rose face,
my rose face gradually and day by day
is not as it was before.

In history, where are the meritorious names?
I wished to retain the youthful years,
to await wealth and eminence;
but wealth and eminence didn't come
and the youthful years departed.
Gone and gone again, like a long river
flowing east to an ocean with no returning waves.

Worthy and fool, eminent and humble,
likewise revert to extinction.

North Hill's burial grounds are high and rock-encircled.
Since antiquity it has been like this—it's not only I.
Not yet dead, there's wine and lofty song.
Yen Hui was short lived, Po I starved.
What I've gotten up to now is already much;
meritorious name, wealth, and eminence must await destiny.
But if destiny doesn't come, what is to be done?

Living in Szechwan (referred to as Pa) in 820, in a remote land which he considered inhabited by barbarians, he wrote about mind and body. His body was feeble but his mind undimmed and entrusted to fate:

My Body

My body—what is it like?
It's like a lone-begotten mugwort.
Autumn frost scissors the root away,
vast-vast it follows the long wind.
I formerly frolicked in the capital's vicinity;
now I have fallen into a land of Pa barbarians.
Formerly, I was an official of thought and spirit;
now I have become an old man solitary and lone.

Though my outer appearance is lone and solitary,
inwardly I cherish an extreme of harmonious blending.
Heaven-conferred fate is thick or thin;
I entrust my heart whether it be
to impoverishment or success.
Success is as a huge bird
raising wings and brushing azured Heavens.
Impoverishment is as a wren
so small that) one branch accommodates it.
If there were only those who knew this way,
their bodies might be impoverished
but never their hearts.

In 821, as the year came to a close he remarked that everything returned to its source, everything but the traveller stationed in the south now for the past five years. He counseled himself to accept destiny:

Year's End

Frost descends, water returns to the ravine;
winds fall, trees return to the mountain.
Gradually the year is about to rest,
everything returning to its original source.

Why is it that this south-transferred guest
alone, for five years hasn't yet returned?
Destiny stagnant, my fate's already determined.
Days long, my heart has become filled with tranquillity.
Once also my heart and mouth
quietly thought, and I said to myself:
"Leaving the nation's (capital) was definitely unpleasurable,
returning to my native village won't necessarily be joyous.
Why must I beget my own distress
rejecting the easy and seeking the difficult?"

In 822 he advised himself to accept fate, without seeking to change things. He was fifty years old, having completed two-thirds of his lifetime:

When joy goes, then must grief arise;
when prosperity comes, it is at the extreme of misfortune.
Who says it is like this?
(If so,) why is my path finally blocked?
I once sought divination from an official diviner;
he rubbed the tortoise but was darkly silent.
I also looked up and asked Heaven—
Heaven was merely a blue-blue color.
From here on I'll only entrust to fate,
the profit-riches heart at rest.
Recently, I've shifted to tranquil withdrawal;
my village grounds—setting memories to rest.
Turning, I see distress in the world,
distress in seeking but not getting;
I now have nothing which I seek,
have almost left the terrain of worry and grief.

There is another poem of summation written in 822, in which he balanced personal well-being against failure in government service. The reference to a sage in the poem is to the Emperor:

A cool wind arises in the forbidden palace,
a new moon is begotten on the palace (pond).
Half through the night autumn comes in secret,
the ten-thousand-year willows delicately wave.
Hot and cool alternate in time and season,
bells and drums exchange (announcements of) dark and dawn.
Encountering a Sage, I regret my year-decay;

to reward favor, I grieve my strength is little.
Parasitic eating, of no assistance or benefit,
red insignia emptily bound around.
My cap and carriage roosting in the fields and clouds,
my rice and millet nourishing the mountain birds.

Measuring ability, when I inspect myself
what I've gotten is already considerable.
The fifth rank isn't low,
at fifty I am not an early death.
If I didn't know a heart of satiety
on what day would greed-seeking end?

He cherished an ideal of simple living. In a long poem written in the old five-character style, he described the charms of a village occupied by only two clans, Chu and Ch'en, in which life moved at its own pace, oblivious to outside forces. He contrasted this pristine simplicity with his rootless, wandering existence. At the time of writing he was thirty-six:

The Village of Chu-Ch'en

In Hsü Prefecture, at Ku-feng County (in Kansu), there is a village called CHÜ-Ch'en. It's over a hundred li from the county (capital); the mulberry and hemp are green and densely abundant. The weaver's shuttle sounding whir-awhir, the oxen and donkeys running to and fro. The women draw water from the valley stream, the men gather firewood on the mountains. The county is distant and official matters few; the mountain is deep and the people's customs unadorned. There are resources (but) one doesn't engage in business; there are full-grown males (but) they don't enter the army. Family on family preserve village enterprise, not leaving their gates (even) when their hairs are white. Alive, they are the people of the village; dead, they are the dust of the village. Within the fields young and old regard one another with such joyfulness. One village—only two surnames forming marriages generation after generation; close and distant relatives—for dwelling there is the clan; for frolicking in youth and maturity, there is the group. Yellow chickens and white wine, pleasurable assemblages less than ten-day periods apart. Those alive are not distantly separated, and in taking brides they give priority to close neighbors. Those dead are not distantly buried, and the graves and mounds mostly encircle the village. Since they are tranquil in life and death, they are not distressed by form and spirit; that's why most are long lived, oft seeing their great-great grandsons.

I was born in a village of rites and duties, in youthful adolescence orphaned and poor. I vainly studied to distinguish right from wrong (but) merely selected (the way of) painful diligence. The way of the world prizes moral teachings; the men of the land esteem capping and marriage. Because of these one distresses oneself, in beliefs becoming a person of great error.

At ten I knew how to read books;
at fifteen I was able to compose.
At twenty I was recommended as a Cultivated Talent;
at thirty I became an official Admonitioner.
Below, there was the tie of wife and children;
above, there was the favor of Lord and parents.
I accepted the family and served the nation,
hoping in these (things) not to be unfilial.

Remembering my yesterdays, at the start of travels and roamings: Coming to the present, it was fifteen springs (ago). My lone boat went three times to Ch'u (in the south); my emaciated horse passed (Ch'ang-an in) Ch'in four times. Proceeding at noon, I had the color of starvation; sleeping at night, there was no tranquillity of spirit.

East or west no place to stay—
coming and going like a floating cloud.
In separation and chaos I lost my old village;
my blood-fleshed were mostly scattered and divided.
Chiang-nan and Chiang-pei
each had the relations of a lifetime.
A lifetime of partings throughout the day;
the deceased heard of separated by the years.
Mourning-grieved, lying down till eve;
nocturnal weeping, sitting unto morn.
A fire of sadness wound the crannies of my heart,
a frost of melancholy infiltrated my temple roots.
One life distressed like this—
envy do I the people of (Chu-Ch'en) village.

Po chü-i was moved to sorrow not only by the inevitability of death but by the fact of death when it came to blood relatives and friends. He contrasted the carefree innocence of children with the worries of maturity, and wondered if the child were not father of the man:

Watching Children Play

Milk teeth—shedding seven and eight year olds;
fine silk—wearing three and four year olds;
playing with dirt, fighting with grass,

all day joyous and having fun.
The aged guest in the courtyard,
on his temples white hairs anew.
Once he sees the game of (riding) bamboo horses
he thinks of his youthful, foolish times.
Youthful foolishness involved play and joy,
getting old has much worry and sadness.
Quietly thinking of the one and the other,
I do not know who is foolish.

His daughter Golden Bells was born when he was nearing forty, and on her first birthday he commemorated the occasion in verse, speaking too soon of there possibly being no worry of her early death:

The First Birthday of Golden Bells

My years are about to be forty;
I've a daughter called Golden Bells.
Since her birth, she is first a full year,
learning to sit but not yet able to talk.
For the nonce I have not yet
the feelings of the all-pervasive ones
and still cannot avoid
the compassion of mundane sentiment.

From now on she will be an additional burden,
but I say in vain she is at present a comfort.
If there is no worry of early death
then there is the harassment of marriage.
She is causing my return-to-the-mountains plan
to have to be delayed by fifteen years.

But Golden Bells died in her third year. Po chü-i remembered her in an informal musing way that poignantly revealed his grief:

Remembering Golden Bells(Who Died at Three)

The First Poem

Decaying and sick, a body of forty;
graceful and foolish, a three-year-old daughter.
Not a boy, but still better than nothing—
comforting my emotions, a single comfort at the time.
One morning she abandoned me and departed,
her spirit shadow without a place.

Oh, remembering the time of her early death,
prattle-noise, first learning to speak.
Then I realize that mortal love
is the wherewithal to worry and grief.
Thinking only that before, this had never been,
I use reason to send away hurt and pain.
Forgotten love—the days already old,
three years have shifted heat and cold.
Today, once having hurt my heart
because I met her old wet nurse.

The Second Poem

You together with your parents
for eighty-six ten day periods.
Of a sudden no longer seen,
already three or four springs.
Form and substance basically unreal;
vapors accumulate, perchance take body shape.
Favored love is originally in error,
affinity combines and one is a parent for a time.

Remembering this, on the verge of enlightenment
I rely on it to send away the sad and bitter.
I temporarily settle down through reason,
but I am not one to forget my feelings.

When Po was living by Wei Village in 813, withdrawn from office and in mourning, he rested one autumn evening at the eastern burial grounds. The "white poplar" mentioned in the poem was planted by the graves. However, from the Han dynasty onward, the pine and cypress were mentioned almost exclusively as the sepulchral trees planted by the Chinese, who believed that they protected the manes of the dead.⁹ The "Jade Stream" signifies the place:

A day of cool breeze, cold dew, lonely desolation;
field of yellow artesmisia, purple
chrysanthemums, barren coolness.
Little color have the autumn flowers round the graves;
flutter-flutter fly tiny insects and small butterflies.
In the midst there is one who nimbly moving walks alone,
hand supporting a fishing pole, not riding a horse.
Returning late from fishing at the southern stream,
I rest in this burial ground beneath a white poplar.
My coarse garments are half old, my white hair new—
if one met me would he know who I am?
Who would say that the guest living in obscurity

by the Wei river bank
once performed as an official
in attendance at the Jade Stream?

He composed elegies for his friends, lamenting their premature deaths and sighing because their talents had been ignored. In 806 he wrote the following elegy for Yang Hung-chen, a fellow scholar. (Yen Hui was a brilliant disciple of Confucius who died young):

Yen Hui of old short lived;
Confucius pitied His Worthiness' (untimely end).
Mr. Yang also liked to study;
unluckily, he too reverted to futility (too soon).
Who knows the intent of Heaven and Earth?
Longevity is given only to tortoises and cranes.

Ten years later, in his middle forties, the increasing number of deaths among his acquaintances prompted him to write a poem on death for Yüan Chen and three other friends¹⁰ serving in scattered posts in the provinces. (The prefectures Feng and Feng, which are two names in Chinese, have tonal differences):

Yesterday I heard of A's death,
this morning I hear of B's.
From the threefold division of my friends,
two-thirds have changed to spirits.
The departed ones I don't see again.
How saddened! How prolonged!

The ones alive—now what can I do?
All apart from me ten thousand li.
In a lifetime those who know one's heart,
bend the fingers (to count)—how many can there be?

T'ung, Kuo, Feng and Feng Prefectures.
Insignificantly, the four gentlemen
thinking of one another as we age,
the floating life like flowing water.
One must sigh at the old frolics together,
withered and fallen—the days like this.
How fitting would be a cup of wine,
to open my eyes and exchange laughing glances.

He dreamed of former Chief Minister P'ei Chi (765-813) long after P'ei had died, and wept with the awareness that it had been but a dream. P'ei Chi had been in close sympathy with Po, especially in supporting his stand in 809 against the eunuchs:¹¹

Dreaming of Duke P'ei the Minister,
five years separated by life from death,
one night our spirits communed in dream.
In the dream it was as in days past—
together direct to the Palace of Golden Bells.¹²
Like a golden purplish color (the sash you wore),
clearly distinguishable your face of jade eternal.
Intimate my yearning thoughts of you,
the same as they had been in normal life.

When I awoke, I knew it was a dream,
was grieved with emotions unending.
Pursuing my thoughts to times and events of then,
how different from the midst of yesterday eve!
Since studying the dharma of heartfulness,
the ten thousand affinities form a single void.
This morning on your behalf
my tears flowed and at once moistened my chest.

The death of a villager in 814 elicited an elegy from Po; he had enjoyed the villager's friendship when he had no one to talk with other than the local peasantry:

Sighing Over Mr. Ch'ang

The son of the Ch'ang clan of West Village
had been lying sick for some time.
Till ten days ago he still visited me;
today they suddenly say he has perished.
At the time, often sick and at leisure,
I stayed with him together in the fields.
Our garden forest, green and thriving,
was several li distant from here.

There was no (other) good journeyer among village neighbors;
what I encountered were only peasants.
This person—what was he like?
Associating with him was still better than nothing.
And now he has already gone;
I should heave a long sigh for him.

In the following year, the death of Li the Third elicited a poem from Po closer in tenor to his poetry of social protest, for he protested to Heaven about the senselessness of snatching away the life of a man of talent with a sick wife and an infant daughter:

Weeping Over Li the Third

Last year, at the bend of the Wei River
in autumn he came to visit me.
This year, at the Ward of Constant Pleasure (in Ch'ang-an)

the spring day weeps at your reversion (to non-life).
Weeping over you, I look up and ask Heaven:
x0022;What indeed is Heaven's intent?
If you had to snatch away his longevity,
wouldn't it have been better not to grant him talent?
The fallen state of things after decease—
wife sick and daughter in infancy."

He wrote an elegy in 820 on the death of Wang Chihfu, a very close friend from whom he had been separated by official service. Again Po complained about the arbitrariness of Heaven in rewarding the evil and punishing the good. It was at the prompting of Wang Chih-fu fourteen years earlier that Po chü-i and Ch'en Hung had collaborated to produce poetry and prose versions of "Lament Everlasting". The references in the poem to "T'ao" and "Hsieh" are to famed Chin dynasty poets T'ao Yüan-ming and Hsieh Ling-Yün; references to "Hsi" and "Juan" are to ancients Hsi K'ang and Juan Chi:

Weeping Over Wang Chih-fu

We parted in front of the Temple to Which Immortals Frolic,
parted more than ten years ago.
Parting in life is still cutting-keen;
to what can a parting through death be likened?

A stranger came from Tzu-t'ung (in Szechwan)
to say your death was not an empty (rumor).
I was startled and suspicious,
not yet believing in my heart,
on the verge of weeping
but again indecisive and irresolute.
Indecisive and irresolute, beside my inner gates
sound issued forth and my tears accompanied it.

On my garments are today's tears,
in the trunk the previous month's letter.
Pitiable you, with the ways of the ancients,
further, with the manner of the Superior Man.
Your poetry chanted in the style of T'ao and Hsieh,
your manner and feelings in the class of Hsi and Juan.
As an official you had a bad destiny
and your life was over in an instant.

I know that Heaven is extremely high,
but how could I not once cry out?
Chiang-nan has poisonous snakes,
Chiang-pei has apparitional foxes;
they both enjoy a longevity of a thousand years
more than Wang Chih-fu.
I don't know what virtues they have,
I don't know what crimes he had.

Po sent a poem to Yüan Chen in 820, lamenting the deaths of old friends. He concluded with the hope that he and Yüan might meet one day in Ch'ang-an, a hope realized in 821. (Chih-fu refers to Wang Chih-fu):

Crying Over Old Friends,
Then Sending (the Poem) to Yüan the Ninth

Yesterday I wept at the inner door,
today I weep at the inner door.
If you ask who I am weeping about,
it is none but my old intimate friends.
Wei-ch'ing has already gone on the long (journey),
Chih-fu is also in the gloomy sunkenness.
Counting on my fingers the years they've gone,
holding back my tears and thinking of myself.

They were both younger than I,
but have gone first as men of the nether springs.
Now my head is half-white;
how can my body long survive?
Well do I think of Officer Yüan,
an acquaintance of twenty springs;
formerly I saw you beget a child,
now I hear you enfold a grandson.

The ones alive are grown completely aged,
the ones who have passed are already dust.
Sooner or later, at your home
in (the Ward of) Rising Peacefulness
I'll resolve my melancholy by seeing you.

In 822 he returned late one night after paying a call on the bereft family of his deceased friend Li Chien. He had also visited a very sick official, whom I presume to be Ts'ui Ch'ün, bedridden for three years. Po revealed his feelings in a brief poem. "Yüan" refers to Yüan Tsung-chien, Yüan Chen's cousin and the poet's close friend:

Returning Late and Feeling Sad

Morning, I pay a condolence call on the bereft of I family;
evening, I Invite about the illness in the Ts'ui family

Turning my horse, I return alone
with eyebrows lowered, heart depressed-despondent.

Those with whom (I was) on good terms in life
did not exceed six or seven at the most;
how is it that in a ten-year interval
scattered-fallen, of three there is not one.
Liu previously I saw in dreams,
Yüan earlier I lost before the flowers.
Gradually aging, with whom shall I frolic?
A city of spring, a fine scenic day.

He mourned the death of a friend who died wifeless and childless, and worried about the funeral arrangements:

Weeping at Night Over Li I-tao

The one who passed on has severed shadow and echo,
empty courtyard—dawn and again dusk.
The wailing of his family about to end,
at night they lock the gate of the spirit chamber.
No wife, no child—who will bury him?
Emptily viewing the inscribed funeral standard
fluttering towards the moon.

Po described the singing of a funeral dirge as the coffin was being pulled along. The "solemn city" is Loyang, "North Mang-shan Hill" a tomb site near Loyang:

The Words of a Funeral Dirge

How the cinnabar standard (of the deceased) flies aloft!
The white (hearse-pulling) horse further sadly neighs.
Dawn's glow illuminates lane and alley,
the hearse-carriage in dignity about to proceed.
Soughing wind, a day of the ninth month;
sad dirge(-singers) leave the solemn city.
If one asks who is sending him off,
it is wife-children and elder-younger brothers.

Green-green, ascending the ancient field,
high-high, opening the new grave.
Holding in affliction, once moved to cry
different mouths share the wailing sounds.

The old mounds turning to weedy inaccessibility,
the new graves daily set in order.
Spring breezes, autumn grasses—North Mang-shan Hill;
at this place, year after year, life-death partings.

…..

Chapter 13 Po's Influence on Japanese Literature: Not Dumplings But Flowers¹

Po Chü-i influenced Japanese literature more than any other Chinese poet. His works were known in Japan while he was still alive; it is a matter of record that Minister Fujiwara no Takamori inspected a T'ang vessel in 838 and secured the collections of Po Chü-i and Yüan Chen. Takamori was given a special investiture when he presented these to the court, and from then on Japanese literati were avid readers of Po's poems. One story alleged that during the lifetime of Emperor Saga (786-842), a part of Po's writings was already kept in the Secretariat. Emperor Saga was said to have been so conversant with the collection that he once changed a word in a poem and showed the change to Ono no Takamura (802-52), prompting Takamura to express deep admiration for the Emperor's poetic talent. This story may be lacking in fact but it is certainly true in spirit, for it symbolizes the enthusiastic response to Po's poetry at court and the profound knowledge of his poems which prevailed throughout the Heian age. Chinese influences were then momentous, for these were the times in which T'ang literature, art, religion, music, calligraphy, and other aspects were first borrowed from and then assimilated into the indigenous culture. Another great Chinese poetic influence was exerted on Heian Japan by the Wen-hsüan ("Selections of Literature"), an anthology of third to seventh century poetry and prose selections. But the stimulus provided by Po's Works far excelled it.

Sugawara Michizane (845-903), who has been eulogized in Japan as a virtual God of Literature and Writing, was said to have kept Po's Works at his side and not to have let the collection out of his hands. There are certain resemblances between the two lives: Michizane and Po came from families of good lineage and bureaucratic service; learned how to write poetry in early youth; passed a series of official examinations; served in a wide variety of government posts; and were removed from court posts and demoted from the capital. Both men also gained enduring fame as writers rather than as politicians. In 883 Michizane entertained a visitor at court from northeast China named P'ei T'ing, and P'ei was said to have praised his poetry, saying that it was comparable to the poetry of Po Lot'ien. Michizane was almost sent to T'ang China in 894 as ambassador, but he decided not to go because of the unsettled conditions which existed in China towards the close of the T'ang.

Michizane wrote poems in Chinese and adopted the name for one of them from a poem by Po chü-i called "Not Leaving The Gates". Po actually wrote two poems with this title, but one of them seems to bear a special ideological relationship to Sugawara's composition. Both poems were written by men who, while having been involved through the force of circumstances in court intrigues, preferred cultivation of the ways of quiescence and reflection.

Po's concluding line signifies that to him evil is mental, not to be repressed but rather surmounted by achieving a state of quiescence and non-desire.

Japanese poets from Sugawara's time onward were generally disinterested in the poems which Po chü-i had valued the most, the poems through which he criticized social abuses and attacked the corruption of those in power. The literati in Japan weren't attracted by the didactic element in his poetry but were drawn rather to the beauty and simplicity of specific lines and phrases. Po had criticized poetry for poetry's sake, emphasizing the importance of content rather than form, but his was a many-sided talent. While he declared that poetry should serve a didactic purpose, many of his two thousand or so regulated poems conveyed thoughts or contained phrases which were undeniably in the moon-and-flower category. These thoughts and phrases appealed profoundly to the Japanese leisure class, and they were incorporated into poems about aesthetic-aristocratic reflections which were centered about the court and totally removed from the lives of the masses beyond. Po's Works came to be considered essential reading for persons of good upbringing. Court Japanese of the Heian era were so familiar with his collection that they referred to it, not as Po-shih wen-chi, but simply as Wen-chi. Sei Shonagon, the famed authoress who attended an imperial consort late in the tenth century, recorded in Pillow-Book (makura no soshi) the books which were important to her. She placed Po's Works first, followed by the Collection of Literature and Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Chronicle of History (shih-chi).

Sei Shonagon's contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu (died 1016), was another woman writer of extraordinary talent who read Po's poems with such thoroughness that she could draw upon them freely and appropriately for literary sustenance. In The Tales of Genji, Murasaki informs us that the men of her age were prejudiced against women who read Chinese, considering them unladylike, but she makes it clear that in private she was an avid reader of Po's verse. She made many references of his writings in The Tales of Genji. "Lament Everlasting" has proven to be an enduring favorite in Japan, still cited today in high school texts, and Murasaki shows that this poem was popular with the Japanese from much earlier times. In one of the chapters of the book called "The Emperor of Kiritsubo", referring to a beloved imperial favorite, Kiritsubo's circumstances are described as parallel to those of Precious Consort Yang. She too is jealously regarded by other palace ladies and made to suffer indignities by them, but she endures their enmity because of the indebtedness she feels towards her royal lover. In another chapter called "Illusion" (maboroshi), the many fireflies fluttering about in the palace are likened to the fireflies described in "Lament Everlasting". And in the chapter about Kiritsubo, the Emperor mourns her death in ways strongly reminiscent of the ways the Illustrious Celestial of the T'ang mourned his deceased consort. He looked over the presents he had given Kiritsubo, immersed in sadness as he noted the hairpins, and felt a desire to locate her spirit. A series of images is then presented which describe Precious Consort Yang: Her painted image could not fully depict her charms; the forlorn T'ang sovereign was reminded of her make-up by the camellias at T'ai-yeh Palace and the willows at Wei-yang Palace; he thought of how lovely she had been, so lovely that even the colors of flowers and birds were not comparable. Her speech mannerisms, the vows they'd made to be like one-winged birds and linked branches—the forlorn ruler was overwhelmed by lament unending. Kiritsubo's sovereign slept alone at the time of the autumn moon, weeping at the sounds of the song "Above The Clouds" and thinking of the night she had entered the palace. He sighed like the T'ang Emperor, and similarly became negligent about rising early to preside at court, lost his appetite for food, and was unable to forget her.

Murasaki once described how, as she was returning home, the mountains were truly three thousand li beyond. As the fifteenth night approached, she revealed how she thought of the amusements being held every-where at the palace and looked at the face of the moon. She was unable to repress her tears as she chanted of the hearts of the ancients two thousand li beyond. These reflections of Murasaki were probably suggested by the following poetic lines of Po chü-i. He was writing about the mid-autumn festival, which took place on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar moon while he was sleeping alone in the Hanlin Academy within palace confines and thinking of his cherished friend Yüan Chen:

I face the moon,
remembering Yüan the Ninth.
Silver Terrace,
Golden Tower,
at night deep-darkened.
Sleeping alone in Hanlin,
thinking of you.
On the night of Three Fives,
the new moon's color;
two thousand li beyond,
my old friend's heart.

The last two lines are very well known, being cited in many sources. The poem was popular in Japan during and after the Heian era, and was quoted in A Collection of Recitable Japanese and Chinese Verse (wakan roeishu, 1013), The Tales of Heike (ca. 1240), and A Record of the Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira Clans (Gen Pei seisuiki, ca. 1338).

In The Tales of Genji, Murasaki used a part of Po's theme of the unfairness of the marriage system, namely where Po wrote of the two ways to wed, either in wealth or in poverty—but while extracting an essential phrase she ignored the didacticism. She had an episode in the second chapter about how a group of young nobles gathered together on a rainy night to discuss the merits and shortcomings of the women they knew. One in the group told of his personal experience in the home of a scholar. He heard that the scholar had many daughters, and went there and made an amorous approach to one of them. When the scholar heard about this, he immediately prepared the sake cups used in wedding ceremonies and asked the young man to listen to the song about the two ways of marriage. There is a passing reference in the book to another of Po's poems, in the chapter called "The Festival of Red Leaves". The voice of the lutist is likened to the voice of the lutist that Po chü-i once described. The point of interest here is that the reference is not to "Lute Song", which next to "Lament Everlasting" is probably the best known of Po's poems in present-day Japan. It refers instead to the little-known poem about a lutist playing on a river boat which Po wrote about two years before he wrote "Lute Song".

Kaneko Hikojiro, the foremost authority on the relationship between Po's Works and Heian literature, notes that it is relatively easy to uncover citations to Chinese poetry in Japanese literature in which the relevant passages are clearly and unambiguously indicated. That is why he believes such passages have tended to be thoroughly considered and analyzed. Professor Kaneko stated it was much more difficult to trace the influences of Chinese poetry and prose when only an isolated word or phrase was incorporated into what was otherwise a purely Japanese composition, but that this could be done by the properly equipped specialist who painstakingly conducted comparative investigations. Professor Kaneko was able to uncover relationships not noted prior to his researches, and it is some of these original contributions which supply the substance for the subsequent discussion of how the poems by Heian writers and Po chü-i were interrelated.

Two incidents related by Sei Shonagon in Pillow-Book show that she and her court associates were thoroughly familiar with Po's poetry collection, acquainted as well with poems not especially well known or preferred. Heian literati tested one another on their knowledge of such Chinese poems by quoting lines out of context but in appropriate circumstances to see if the recipient could come forth with the proper reaction or response. On one occasion, when the Empress asked her about the snow of Fragrant Hearth Peak, Sei Shonagon responded at once. From where she was seated, with a superlatively graceful move she raised the screen as if to look out at the snow. She was pantomiming a line from the third of five poems by Po chü-i entitled "Fragrant Hearth Peak":

The sun is high;
sleepy-legged,
I still lazily rise.
In my room
the coverlets are piled up,
I don't fear the cold.

Heard through my pillow
the bell at the Temple of Love Bequeathed;
pushing aside the screen, I see
the snow of Fragrant Hearth Peak.

The lines in this poem about listening to the bell at the temple and pushing aside the screen to see the snow became famous and oft-repeated. But Sei Shonagon was able to respond to a much more difficult test of memory. It was then a common practice for poets to create Japanese poems together in a thirty-one syllable, five-line form. The first poet might contribute the last two lines of seven syllables, while the second poet was expected to compose the first three lines (five-seven-five syllables). Pillow Book describes a poetic exchange of this type between the famous scholar-official Fujiwara no Kinto (960-1041) and Sei Shonagon. The time was the last day or so of the second lunar month; the wind was blowing severely, the sky was black, and a light snow was falling. Just then a messenger came to the palace and gave Sei Shonagon a letter from Kinto. She looked at the special writing paper, on which Kinto had the written lines:

There is indeed
a slight spring feeling.

Sei Shonagon comments that the lines were really well attuned to the day's weather and that she was perplexed as how to reply. She asked who was in the palace to assist her with the composition, but everyone was embarrassed and nonplussed as how best to respond to the famous scholar's lines. Sei Shonagon admitted her distress at completing the poem inelegantly. She wanted to let her mistress, the Emperor's second consort, see what Kinto had written, but the mistress was then in the royal bedroom with the Emperor. The messenger urged her to respond and, since she didn't want to be slow as well as inept, she worried no longer but wrote:

In the sky's coldness,
looking like flowers,
the snow is scattering;

(Kinto)

there is indeed
a slight spring feeling.

She wrote out her lines and handed the response to the messenger, worrying about how everyone would regard them. She wanted to find out what the reaction was, but was afraid to for fear her effort was being disparaged. But then she heard that those in authority had praised her composition, saying it was so good they intended to petition the throne to get her promoted.

Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705) commented on this poetic exchange in his famous study of Pillow-Book, called Shunshosho, completed in 1674, noting that a later poet called Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204) was prompted by it to compose a poem on a related theme. Kaneko Hikojiro points out that subsequent Japanese researchers, like Kitamura, regarded the poetic exchange between Kinto and Sei Shonagon as spontaneous, evoked by the natural surroundings. Later generations followed suit, but Professor Kaneko came forward with the thesis that it represented a very skillful adaptation by both poets of a seven-character line, eight-line regulated poem by Po chü-i called "The Snow of Southern Ch'in":

In former years
I was once
an official in the west,
used to going
from Camel's Mouth
to Southern Ch'in.
At the third hour,
cloud-cold and much flying snow;
in the second month,
mountain-chilly and a slightness of spring.

I think of the old things,
still vexed-depressed.
You're making a first journey,
surely pained-embittered.
I still trust that
the melancholy monkeys
don't cry out in the cold;
if one hears them cry,
it makes man even more melancholy.

Po wrote this poem in response to a poem Yüan Chen had sent him while on his way to Szechwan to serve. Po was used to the road, but commiserated with his friend who had to travel it in the cold, when there was only a slight touch of spring in the air. "The Snow of Southern Ch'in" was not highly regarded in Japanese literary circles, being considered mediocre. Fujiwara Kinto may have been prompted to adapt one line midway through the poem because of its relative obscurity and to transform this into the last two lines of a tanka poem in order to test the comprehensiveness of Sei Shonagon's knowledge of Chinese verse. It was of course far more difficult for the one being tested to trace the source of a Japanese adaptation of a Chinese poetic line than it would have been if the line had been recited in the original Chinese. But Sei Shonagon responded to the challenge by likewise adapting the appropriate lines in Po's poem to precede what Kinto had written. This is why Kinto was overwhelmed, and why others so admired her astuteness that they spoke of petitioning the throne to have her officially promoted. Other court poets must have realized the connection of Po's poem to the tanka written in collaboration, but no record of this was made, and therefore the fact that it was a skillful adaptation from the Chinese escaped the notice of untold generations of students of Heian literature. Professor Kaneko's discovery of the adaptation process in this instance proves conclusively that Heian literati must have known Po's poetry extremely well, for they were able to challenge one another's remembrance of lines in a collection totalling almost three thousand poems.

In still another incident, Sei Shonagon showed her expertise in matters related to Po Chü-i's writings.² She was once tested by official Fujiwara no Takanobu (967-1035), who quoted lines from a poem that Po had written in exile and requested that she indicate how the stanza ended. This she did, though in Japanese rather than in the original Chinese characters, perhaps because she felt that her calligraphy was inadequate:

At the grass hut
who will pay a call?

She received the nickname of "Grass Hut" as a consequence of this incident, and everyone was said to have written this on their fans. In Fujiwara no Kinto's collected works, he referred to one occasion when he gave the above quotation as the last two lines of a tanka and an imperial archives keeper named Takatada completed the poem with these first three lines:

The Imperial Palace,
a capital of flowers
being abandoned:

(Kinto)

At the grass hut
who will pay a call?

Kinto edited the well-known Collection of Japanese and Chinese Recitable Verse (wakan roeishu), completing it in 1013. This collection consisted of translations of what he considered superlative lines of Chinese verse written by either Chinese or Japanese, augmented by about two hundred Japanese poems. The collection contained 140 phrases from Po Chü-i, far outnumbering citations from all other Chinese poets. At least two of these selections have preserved their popularity in Japan to the present day and are to be found in current high school texts. The first was written about a pond west of the Honan prefectural office where Po served in later years:

The willow is spiritless,
its limbs preceding it in movement.
The ice has wave crests,
its ice breaking up throughout.
Today I was unaware,
but someone contrived a get-together.
Spring breezes and spring waters
have come at the same time.

Ki no Tsurayaki (882-945) compressed these thoughts into a thirty-one syllable Japanese verse:

On the water's surface
there blows about
a spring breeze;
the ice of the pond
is about to melt.

The second selection from Po's poetry was called "Confronting The Wine". In the opening line, the poet alluded to a phrase from the Chuang-tzu about how the two horns of a snail once fought one another in a territorial dispute. In the third line, the "glow from a stone spark" refers to the brevity of life; the concluding thought about laughter is also taken in part from the Chuang-tzu, in which it is said that man is so overburdened by illness and grief that he only laughs four or five days a month:

On the horns of the snail—
what do they quarrel about?
To the glow from a stone spark
do I entrust this body.
Whether rich or poor
I take my pleasures.
One who doesn't
open his mouth to laugh
is a fool.

Po CHü-i's theme about life's impermanence inspired an unknown writer to compose a noh chant, repeating only the simile of the stone spark:

Those human faces
glorious at morn,
decaying at night.
The shadow of the glow
from a lightning flash
and a stone spark.
Time is a thatched hut
which waits for no man.
From the time he enters
it darkens quickly,
and in an instant
his tears will flow.

The major Heian verse collections contain many Japanese poems in which lines or phrases were adapted from Po Chü-i. Professor Kaneko cites a few examples of these adaptations, noting that the practice of taking words and lines from Chinese writers was initiated by Manyoshu poets. One of them, for example, incorporated verbatim a statement in the Chuang-tzu about putting one's heart in the village of nothingness. Heian admirers of Po Chü-i's poetic expression made their adaptations in one of two ways. They either imitated the original content with fidelity or availed themselves of one section in order to express personal reflection or outlook which might or might not coincide with the thought of the Chinese poet. Japanese adaptations tended towards originality rather than towards literal translation. Poets used the Chinese lines and phrases as starting points for amplifying their own ideas.

Po once wrote:

There's only the coming of old age,
among men no place to escape it.

Ariwara no Narihira (825-80) expressed a similar but more complex thought, ending on a hopeful note to which was added a touch of whimsy:

Cherry blossoms
a profusion of clouds,
making the road
on which old age comes
err (because of the luxuriance of the blossoms).

Po had written:

There's a departing wild goose,
turning its back on spring.

This theme was expanded by an early tenth-century poetess of the Fujiwara clan:

Though spring's haze
has set in, it's ignored by
the travelling wild goose.
Is it used to living
in a no flower village?

There was this poetic line in Po's Works about the willow:

Slender-delicate willow silk,
coming forth silkily in the breeze.

Ki no Tsuruyuki (882-945) followed Po's thought closely, in a poem of spring:

Every spring
the unseverable things.
Green willows
coming forth
as silk in a breeze.

The Japanese poet placed Chinese poetic phrases in his composition as a sign of erudition, knowing that such usage was well received. Poems which had such phrases were called "poems (based on) topics". In 894 Oe no Chisato collected these poems at imperial order. Professor Kaneko analyzed 109 phrases and concluded that almost three-fourths (seventy-two phrases) were taken from Po chü-i's poems. Some of his poetic lines must have been extremely popular in Japan and widely used. One of the more famous lines was:

Neither clear nor unclear,
the obscure moon.

About fifty years after Po's death, Oe no Chisato made this poetic adaptation:

Not illuminated,
not clouded over,
a springlike
moon of haze:
There is nothing better.

Po wrote about the change of seasons:

Wild goose rapidly flying in the cold—
I sense the extinction of autumn.

Oe no Chisato followed Po's thought rather closely:

The travelling wild geese
are quickly flying.
From seeing this
there came to me
an end-of-autumn feeling.

Po once wrote about the delight of dreams:

To delight and laugh in dreams
is to conquer melancholy.

Oshikochi no Mitsune (died 921) viewed joy in dreams as a consolation for the loneliness of the wakeful state:

If you see happiness
even in dreams,
when you're awake
it's superior
to feeling lonely.

Po, who repeatedly saw decay and disintegration symbolized in his white hairs, likened them to silken threads:

In late years my hair seems
like silken threads before the mirror.

Ki no Tsuruyuki (882-945) adapted the thought but changed the simile:

The raven-colored
black hair of mine.
As years darken,

within the mirror
it's like falling snow.

An anonymous contributor to a mid-tenth century Japanese poetry collection was inspired by these lines from one of Po's poems:

I'll strive to get a great fur garment
a hundred thousand feet in length,
to give you for covering over
all of Loyang City.

But the anonymous poet pitied not the people but the flowers:

May the great heavens
be covered only
by my sleeves.
Flowers that blossom in spring
are not to be wind-entrusted.

Po explained his liking for fire and snow in the opening lines of a poem in which he revealed how he appreciated their existence:

What I ordinarily love at heart:
I love fire and pity snow.
Fire is the spring of a wintry day,
snow is the moon of a darkened night.

In the eleventh century, a Japanese Buddhist priest with the epithet of Soi ("Plain Intent") was inspired by Po's theme of fire and snow to expound his own poetic-philosophic thoughts on the subject:

In the banked fire's
vicinity, spring
feelings are evoked,
regarding the falling flakes
truly as flowers.

Po contrasts the splendor of spring with the decay of being, in a poem called "Sighing Over White Hairs, Neath the Cherry Blossoms". These are the opening lines:

Place after place the flowers are fine,
but my looks naturally deteriorate with the years.
The day: red cherries fill my eyes;
the time: white hairs cover half my head.

Ki no Tomonori (845-905) made the same comparison of nature and man:

Both color and fragrance
as in times gone by—
so seem the cherry blossoms.
Only aged persons
are ever changed.

There is conclusive evidence that Japanese poets of the Heian era paid close attention to Po's Works and enjoyed making new and unusual poetic adaptations. Po Chü-i's poetry provided intellectual and aesthetic stimuli to Japanese poets, who made skillful and original interpretations, aided by their accurate understanding of the original texts. The Heian poets gradually brought about a change from the poetry of pure emotion of the Manyoshu to the more sophisticated compositions of their own age. Qualitatively, the direction was from the simple to the complex; quantitatively, there was a great increase in poetic output. Kaneko Hikojiro concludes that no matter how much the Japanese adapted foreign culture, they were able to make these cultural innovations serve their own needs. In the example provided by Po's Works, this certainly seems to be a valid conclusion. His themes provided an initial impetus for the Japanese poet, but subsequent development within Japanese poetic genre conformed to indigenous criteria, so that the borrowing was more imaginative than rote.

The natural lover and poet Saigyo (1118-90) once wrote a poem about the autumn moon:

Saving, be sad!
the moon causes
us to think;
sad-faced,
my tears fall.

This poem expressed the same sentiment as Po chü-i in a famous poem in which he contrasts the moon's obliviousness to human sufferings:

Autumn Moon

The fine light for ten thousand li can't think.
Added melancholy, increased remorse,
coiling about Heaven's extremes.
Someone beyond the frontiers,
on prolonged subjugation duties;
before a garden somewhere
there's a new separation.
An aged beauty who's lost favor
returns at night to her courtyard;
an old general submerged among barbarians
ascends a tower.
The moon shines on him,
almost causing his heart to break.
This jade rabbit, this silver toad,
is distant and unknowing.

In China the moon was said to assume rabbit and toadlike shapes, and therefore it was also called "Jade Rabbit" and "Silver Toad".

The sixth chapter of The Tales of Heike (ca. 1240) describes a famous incident about red leaves, which came directly from one of Po's poems. The Japanese sovereign had the leaves which had fallen in the wind gathered together and burned, using the fire to warm wine. He felt extremely content and laughingly referred to a poetic line about being, "In the forest burning the red leaves, warming the wine", and asked those assembled if anyone could tell him what the line meant. It was an easy quotation to give, but the courtiers all felt that if the query were answered simply, the person who responded might be praised but the Emperor would become displeased, so nobody answered. The original line was in a poem which Po chü-i had written to his friend Wang Chih-fu when Wang returned to the mountains:

I once went in front of Great White Peak,
several times got inside
the Temple to Which Immortals Frolic.
When the black waters were settled,
the lake's depths appeared.
White clouds broke through in places,
the gates of the caves opened.
In the forest warming wine, burning red leaves,
inscribing a poem on a rock, sweeping green moss.
Vexed-depressed that the old frolics don't come again,
at chrysanthemum blossom season, I envy your return.

Po chü-i regretted that he and Wang had been able to frolic together so rarely, and he envied Wang's return to the natural scenic splendors they had enjoyed in the finest season, when the chrysanthemum were in bloom.

Kato Chikage (1735-1808) made a poetic adaptation of the love theme in "Lament Everlasting", with which it is perhaps appropriate to conclude, for this is the poem by Po chü-i which remains most popular in Japan to the present day.

Night after night,
our sleeves enfolded
just that way,
to be wing-transformed
and fly to the Heavens.

Notes

¹ Ch'en Yin-k'o, Yüan Po shih chien-cheng Kao, p. 284.

² Ch'en Shou-yi, Chinese Literature, p. 310. See Professor Ch'en's ensuing discussion of the rationale behind the New Music Bureau form and its metric patterns.

³ Cf. Takagi, Haku Kyoi, Vol. I, pp. 8-9.

⁴ Takagi, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 10.

⁵ Ch'en Yin-k'o, op. cit., p. 154, noted that some editions lack the characters for "white-haired". He concluded that the version with the characters is the correct one.

⁶ For these and other details on annotations for this poem, see Ch'en Yin-k'o, op. cit., pp. 156-58.

⁷ Ibid., op. cit., p. 158.

⁸ This is sometimes entitled "Girls of Poor Families".

⁹ On the connections between this poem and one of Po's later poems in the New Music Bureau style, see Ch'en Yin-k'o, op. cit., p. 259.

¹⁰ See Alfred Koehn, "Chinese Flower Symbolism", (Monumenta Nipponica, VIII, February, 1952), p. 135.

¹¹ Koehn, "Chinese Flower Symbolism", op. cit., p. 144.

Chapter 4

¹ Cf. Ch'en Yu-ch'in, Po Chü-i chuan, Introduction, p. 3.

² Takagi, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 7.

³Ibid., Vol. II, p. 8.

⁴ This observation is made by Feifel, Po chü-i as a Censor, p. 6.

⁵ Itsukai Tomoyoshi, Tó Enmei (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1965), p.3. For an English translation of T'ao's verse, cf. Acker, T'ao the Hermit, (London, 1952).

⁶ Itsukai, op. cit., p. 36. This monograph has the original texts of T'ao's preface and the twenty drink ing poems, with line-for-line Japanese translations appended below the Chinese lines of each poem.

⁷ The Duke of Chou and Confucius. (For detailed annotation of the sixteen poems in this series, see Po Hsiang-shan shih-hsuan (Hong Kong, 1958), Vol. A, pp. 49-70.

⁸ Cf. Waley, The Poetry and Career of Li Po, p. 25.

⁹ These identifications are made by Tanaka Katsumi (Tokyo: Haku Rakuten, 1964), p. 182. Professor Tanaka, who excels in annotation, has translated the second, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth, twelfth and fifteenth of the sixteen poems in this series by Po chü-i.

¹⁰ For the specific words and phrases, see Tanaka, op. cit., p. 184.

¹¹ See Eberhard, Chinese Festivals, Vol. III. Professor Eberhard discusses the different origins of the mid-autumn and Double-Nine festivals.

¹² For the details behind each incident alluded to in the poem, mostly dealing with Ch'in or pre-Ch'in in historical episodes, see [Lei Sung-lin], Po chü-i shih hsüan, I, pp. 59-60.

¹³ For the original text, see Itsukai, op. cit., pp. 55-56.

¹⁴ Because he had planted five willows around his home, T'ao styled himself "Mr. Five Willows."

¹⁵ See Men-shih hsin-yü (cited in Haku Rakuten shishü, Vol. I, p. 478). (The last passage in Chapter 5.)

¹⁶ Haku Rakuten shishu (or Po Hsiang-shan shih ch'ang-ch'ing chi), loc. cit.

¹⁷ "Mr. Quiet and Chaste" (Ching-chieh hsien-sheng), one of the popular appellations of T'ao Yüan-ming.

¹⁸ Noted by Tanaka Katsumi (see Haku Rakuten, p. 270).

Chapter 5

¹ Literally a "P'eng (Tsu)", who was said to have lived for seven hundred years (cited in Shih-chi).

² There was a statement in Mencius about "my immovable heart at forty".

³ Literally P'eng-tse, referring to T'ao by the name of a district which he governed.

⁴ Referring to a priest who built a temple at Ts'ao Rivulet in 502 because the waters there were fragrant.

⁵ Hsi Shu-yeh was a literatus (223-62) and one of the seven so-called worthies of the bamboo forest. He tried to conceal himself but failed, and was killed. (Tanaka, op. cit., p. 176.)

⁶ See Chuang-tzu, the passage called Ch'i-wu lun ("a discussion of the sameness of things").

⁷ See Chuang-tzu, section describing transcendental bliss (Hsiao-yao yu P'ien).

⁸ For exact references, see Chen Tsu-lung, La Vie et les Oeuvres de Wou Tchen, pp. 86-87.

⁹ See the comprehensive monograph by R. H. van Gulik, The Lore of the Chinese Lute (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1940), pp. 19-21.

¹⁰ Literally Lan-jo, a transliteration of the Sanskrit Aranya, literally "forest", by extended meaning used to denote a monastery. (See Soothill and Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, p. 484.)

¹¹ For the details of this story, see Legge, The Ch'un Ts'eu, With the Tso Chuen, Vol. V, Part I, p. 131.

¹² "Mother of the clouds" was a medicinal herb, its origin ascribed to the legendary age of Sage Yao.

¹³ The li measurement in the T'ang dynasty was about 1,800 feet; here as elsewhere, the poet simply indicates a great distance.

Chapter 6

¹ Po in 803 was living in Ch'ang-an's Ward of Constant Pleasure (Ch'ang-lo fang), in a home formerly belonging to the late Chief Minister Kuan Po (719-97). (See Tanaka, op. cit., p. 26.)

² The emperor referred to here was Te-tsung (reigned 780-804).

³ The reference is to Mencius, who cited a poem by a scholar to the effect that when this river was clear, he could wash his tassels in it, and that when it was turbid he could wash his feet in it. (See Mencius, section called Li Lou, A.)

⁴Yin-ni ("purplish ink") was an ancient way of sealing letters and memorials, to which reference is made in the History of Later Han. Yin-ni-shu ("purplish-inked writing") came to connote "memorial".

⁵ The "empty boat" as a Taoist metaphor for the enlightened must have been popular at the time, for Po referred to another friend as "Empty Boat Kuo" (cf. Waley, Po, p. 127).

⁶ Referring to the palace where the Emperor lived.

⁷ Wang Chih-fu? (I have been unable to identify this person with certainty.)

⁸ See his biography in Chung-kuo jen-ming ta tzu-tien, p. 850.

⁹ The Star of Fortune (te-hsing), was supposed to convey blessings. This belief was already current in Han times.

¹⁰ This phrase was copied, with minor alterations, from a phrase in the Book of Odes.

¹¹ A pond located in Ch'ang-an.

¹² Referring literally to the P'eng-lai Mountains, believed to be one of three mountains of Immortals located in the eastern seas.

¹³ See De Groot, The Religious System of China, Vol. III, p. 935.

¹⁴ The poem does not give Ch'ii's personal name; he may have been related to Ch'ü Hsin-ling, a noted administrator of the Chen-yüan era (785-804) for whom Po chü-i was said to have composed the Songs of Ch'in. (See Chung-kuo jen-ming ta tzu-tien, 1762.)

¹⁵ The creation of a southern sect, also known as the Bodhidharma School, took place about 700. The difference between north and south in methods of enlightenment came to be expressed in the phrase "southern immediate, northern gradual." (Soothill, op. cit., p. 297-98.) There were ten principal Buddhist sects in late T'ang. (Ch'en Tsu-lung, La Vie et Les Oeuvres de Wou-Tchen (816-95), pp. 12-13.)

¹⁶ This is an allusion to a phrase in the Classic of History (Shu-ching, Chün-ya section), referring to trustworthy ministers as "limbs and arms, heart and back".

¹⁷ Wu referred to the Kiangsu area in the south, not far from where Po was then stationed.

¹⁸ For dating the poem by Po chü-i, I have relied on the information in Hakushi monju no hihanteki kenkyū, 498 seq.

¹⁹ Cf. Waley, Po, pp. 127-28.

Chapter 7

¹ Li Fang is one of the best-known of the T'ang portraitists, probably because of Po's poetic references to him. (See T'ang Sung hua-chia jen-ming tzutien, Peking, 1958, p. 89; Waley, Po, p. 49.)

² Literally "the double yang", nine being considered yang, or male element.

³ For additional details about the site and cottage, see Waley, Po, pp. 118-19.

⁴ The name of a pavilion established by Emperor T'aitsung (reigned 627-50) of the T'ang, in which he had drawn the portraits of meritorious officials.

⁵ Cf. Hsü-ch'i chieh-chi, P'i-p'a chi.

⁶Ou-pei shih-hua, as cited in Haku Rakuten shishū, Ch. 6, p. 546.

⁷ Original Harmony (Yüan-ho) was the name given to Emperor Hsien-tsung's method of reign. This temple was located atop the Wang-shun ("Royal Accord") Mountain, about six or seven miles southeast of Lant'ien County. (In translating obscure terms, I usually follow the interpretations in Tanaka, Haku Rakuten, pp. 198-212, q.v.)

⁸ There were many tombs of Han emperors located north of the Wei River.

⁹ Kasyapa Buddha was the name of the sixth of the seven ancient Buddhas said to have preceded Sakyamuni. (Cf. note in Soothill, op. cit., p. 316.)

¹⁰ Kasaya referred to the monk's robe, or cassock, the word meaning "impure in color". The robe was dyed, to distinguish it from secular white dress. (Soothill, op. cit., p. 363.)

¹¹ The so-called Goddess of Mercy in the Buddhist pantheon, the protector of those in distress.

¹² The seven treasures or precious things, which are variously enumerated.

¹³ The name of a park secured from Prince Veta which was Sakyamuni's favorite resort. (Soothill, op. cit., p. 310-11.)

¹⁴ Reference to a local deity, in the temple's vicinity.

¹⁵ Reference to Wang Tzu-ch'iao, a Chou dynasty immortal described in Leih-hsien Chuan.

¹⁶ The literal reference is to "a volume of Southern Splendors". In 742 Chuang-tzu's writings were ordered by imperial decree to be called "The True Classic of Southern Splendors".

Chapter 8

¹ See J. C. H. Wu's interesting and thought-provoking article entitled "The Four Seasons of T'ang Poetry" (T'ien Hsia Monthly, Vol. VI, Jan.-May, 1938; Vol. VII., Aug.-Dec, 1938), in which he presents translations from Po and other poets, east and west. Professor Wu regarded Po as an autumnal spirit, one to whom Tu Fu's violent searchings of the heart would have seemed excessive; he considered Po the most autumnal of the T'ang poets, in heart as well as head. To him, Po typified Eastern (Buddhist) man, shying away from love for fear of reaping sorrow. Po had a passionate nature, concluded Professor Wu, but was preoccupied by a sense of desolation.

² P'an Yüeh, a literatus who lived in the Chin dynasty, was said to have excelled in composing poetry in an elegiac mood.

³ Dhuta, to be released from life's ties so as attain nirvana. There were twelve precepts to be followed, enumerated in Soothill, op. cit., pp. 453-54.

⁴ I take this to be an oblique reference to Po's wife being ill. "Lai's wife" refers to a woman praised in Lieh-tzu for having spurned a life of officialdom for her husband, willingly sharing poverty with him instead.

⁵ Referring to a song which was then very popular in the Szechwan region. (See Waley, Po, p. 130.)

⁶ Alfred Koehn, op. cit., p. 144.

⁷ Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius, p. 30, refers to Tungp'o as Su's poetic name. He says only that it came from part of a title ("The Recluse Tung-p'o") which Su took for himself when he was living in banishment on the eastern slope (tung-p'o) of Huang-chou. The allegation that Su Shih took this name from the two poems by Po translated here was made in Ou-pei shihhua (cited in Haku Rakuten shishū, Vol. II, p. 126), which states that Su probably adopted this name out of admiration for Po chü-i's poems. (Po also had a third poem called "Walking the East Slope".)

⁸ See Koehn, op. cit., p. 134.

⁹ This was a paraphrase by Po of a comment which T'ao Yüan-ming once made to one of his sons. (See Tanaka, Haku Rakuten, p. 295.)

Chapter 9

¹ See the Chuang-tzu, passage under Hsiao-yao yu.

² See the references to this term listed in Morohashi, Dai Kanwa jiten, under Shuang-nan and Shuangnan-chin.

³ The Buddhist way, the way to which "all things are empty" (wan-shih chieh-k'ung).

⁴ A reference to Ts'ui Ch'ün (772-832), a talented official and close friend of Po Chü-i. (Cf. Waley, Po, pp. 86, 126, 183, 208.)

⁵ Literally fou-t'u, apparently a transliteration. (Cf. Soothill, op. cit., p. 322.)

⁶ The poems are cited in Morohashi, op. cit., under Sung-ch 'un.

⁷ See Gernet, Daily Life in China (translated by H. M. Wright, London; 1962), pp. 191-92, for these and other details about the festivals.

⁸ The first four characters (t'ien ch'ang ti-chiu) are the same as the first four in the next to last line of "Lament Everlasting", composed in 806.

⁹ See J. J. M. DeGroot, The Religious System of China, Vol. II (Disposal of the Dead), pp. 460-473, for a discussion of the appearance and significance of sepulchral trees.

¹⁰ Two of whom I identify as Ts'ui Ch'ün (772-832) and Li Chien (764-821).

¹¹ Cf. Waley, Po, pp. 64-65.

¹² This was a euphonious term for the Hanlin Academy, which was given this name because it was contiguous to the Palace of Golden Bells. Po's calling his daughter "Golden Bells" may have been an oblique reference to his service as a Hanlin Academician.

Chapter 13

¹ The information in this chapter is based primarily on the researches of the foremost Japanese scholar on this subject, Professor Kaneko Hikōjirō. He deals with the question in book form (Hakushi mōnju to Heian bungaku), but he also contributed a chapter ("Hakushi mōnju to Heian jidai no bungaku") to a textbook compilation on literature, (Kokugosan-Sogo [Tokyo: Ministry of Education, 1964]). Interested specialists should consult this chapter for the original texts of the poems in Chinese and Japanese cited in my essay, unless otherwise indicated. Mizuno Heiji also describes the influences of Po's Works on Japanese literature from the early beginnings through the Tokugawa era (Haku Rakuten to Nihon bungaku, pp. 108-66.)

² For the translation of this section of Pillow-Book, see Ivan Morris, "The Captain First Secretary, Tadanobu" (Journal Newsletter of Association of Teachers of Japanese), August, 1966, pp. 37-42.

Bibliography

Ch'en Yin-k'o, Yüan Po shih chien-cheng kao. Taipei: privately reprinted, 1956. Detailed consideration of Yüan-Po poetic content, with emphasis on major poems such as "Lament Everlasting" and "Lute Song". The poems in the New Music Bureau style are treated individually and in considerable depth. The direction of the research is primarily historical.

Ch'en Yu-ch'in, Po Chü-i Chüan. Shanghai: Chunghua shu-chü, 1965. Introduction to literary criticism of Po's Works in China from T'ang to Ch'ing times, followed by over 900 items of criticism in the original texts. Valuable as it is, but it would be priceless if these items were translated into pai-hua.

Feifel, Eugene, Po Chü-i as a Censor. The Hague: Monton and Co., 1961.

A good introduction to Po's period of service in the court as an imperial critic (808-10), followed by a description of memorials Po wrote in this period and then an annotated translation of the memorials. Despite the lack of an index, this work is informative and useful.

Lei Sung-lin, Po-Chü-i shih-hsüan i. Hong Kong: Chienwen shu-Chü, 1965.

Modern colloquial translations of 100 poems, stressing the didactic and pleasure categories. Brief annotation, general but not precise citation of sources.

Mizuno Heiji, Haku Rakuten to Nihon bungaku. Tokyo: Meguro shoten, 1930.

The data in the book go far beyond the implications of the title. There is information on the technical changes in Chinese poetry prior to and including the T'ang, an analysis of Po's social status, and biographical details. The poetic forms he used are described, with relevant selections from each. Literary critics of Po's Works are mentioned, and one chapter each is devoted to his influence on Chinese and Japanese literature. The second half of the book contains annotated translations of about 200 selected poems and several of his most important prose writings. Annotation of the poems is somewhat skimpy.

Takagi Masakazu, Haku Kyoi. 2 vols, in series Chugoku shijin senshu. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1964.

The first volume describes the 50 New Music Bureau poems and then translates and annotates them. The second volume describes the pleasure and sorrow poetry and presents about 100 annotated translations, with emphasis on the regulated poems.

Tanaka Katsumi, Haku Rakuten. in the series Kanshi taikei. Tokyo: Shueisha, 1964.

The texts, line-by-line and overall translations of about 160 of Po's better known poems; thoroughly and accurately annotated, with the results of current research incorporated.

Waley, Arthur, The Life and Times of Po Chü-i. London: Allen and Unwin, 1951.

This is a definitive biographical study of the poet-bureaucrat, based on many years of study and a very wide familarity with primary sources. Japanese and Chinese scholars frequently cite it in their own studies, something they rarely do regarding western source materials. The range of consideration is admirable, and much complex research is concealed within the general descriptions and summations of the work.