Crickets chirping answer one another;
Mandarin-ducks sleep, not alone.
Little servant repeatedly announces night;
Returning steps still hesitate._


IN EARLY SPRING ALONE CLIMBING THE T‘IEN-KUNG PAGODA

[_A.D. 389_]

_T‘ien-kung sun warm, pagoda door open;
Alone climbing, greet Spring, drink one cup.
Without limit excursion-people afar-off wonder at me;
What cause most old most first arrived!_

While many of the pieces in “170 Chinese Poems” aimed at literary form
in English, others did no more than give the sense of the Chinese in
almost as crude a way as the two examples above. It was probably because
of this inconsistency that no reviewer treated the book as an experiment
in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most
interested the writer.

In the present work I have aimed more consistently at poetic form, but
have included on account of their biographical interest two or three
rather unsuccessful versions of late poems by Po Chü-i.

For leave to reprint I am indebted to the editors of the _English
Review_, _Nation_, _New Statesman_, _Bulletin of School of Oriental
Studies_, and _Reconstruction_.