of romantic and mystic love between man and woman. Through them
the symbols of the mandarin duck and drake, the one-winged birds,
the tree whose boughs are interwoven, are revealed.
They are the earthly counterparts of the heavenly lovers,
the Cow-herd and the Spinning-maid in the constellations of Lyra and Aquila.
To them Chinese poetry owes some of its finest inspirations,
and at least two of its greatest singers, Tu Fu and Li Po.




Chinese Verse Form



In passing it is necessary to refer to the structure of Chinese verse,
which, difficult as it is to grasp and differing in particulars
from our European ideas of technique, has considerable interest
for the student of verse form and construction.

The favourite metres of the T`ang poets were in lines
of five or seven syllables. There is no fixed rule as regards
the length of a poem, but, generally speaking, they were composed of four,
eight, twelve, or sixteen lines. Only the even lines rhyme,
except in the four-line or stop-short poem, when the first line often rhymes
with the second and fourth, curiously recalling the Rubaiyat form
of the Persian poets. There is also a break or caesura
which in five-syllable verses falls after the second syllable
and in seven-syllable verses after the fourth. The Chinese also make use
of two kinds of tone in their poetry, the Ping or even,