INTRODUCTION


This book is not intended to be representative of Chinese literature as
a whole. I have chosen and arranged chronologically various pieces which
interested me and which it seemed possible to translate adequately.

An account of the history and technique of Chinese poetry will be found
in the introduction to my last book.[1] Learned reviewers must not
suppose that I have failed to appreciate the poets whom I do not
translate. Nor can they complain that the more famous of these poets are
inaccessible to European readers; about a hundred of Li Po’s poems have
been translated, and thirty or forty of Tu Fu’s. I have, as before,
given half my space to Po Chü-i, of whose poems I had selected for
translation a much larger number than I have succeeded in rendering. I
will give literal versions of two rejected ones:

[1] “170 Chinese Poems,” New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1919.


EVENING

[_A.D. 835_]

_Water’s colour at-dusk still white;
Sunsets glow in-the-dark gradually nil.
Windy lotus shakes [like] broken fan;
Wave-moon stirs [like] string [of] jewels.