The Ancient Ballads



A little under three hundred years, from A.D. 618 to 906,
the period of the T`ang dynasty, and the great age of Chinese poetry
had come and gone. Far back in the twilight of history,
at least 1,700 years before Christ, the Chinese people sang their songs
of kings and feudal princes good or bad, of husbandry, or now and then
songs with the more personal note of simple joys and sorrows.
All things in these Odes collected by Confucius belong to the surface of life;
they are the work of those who easily plough light furrows,
knowing nothing of hidden gold. Only at rare moments of exaltation or despair
do we hear the lyrical cry rising above the monotone of dreamlike content.
Even the magnificent outburst at the beginning of this book,
in which the unhappy woman compares her heart to a dying moon,
is prefaced by vague complaint:

My brothers, although they support me not,
Are angry if I speak of my sadness.

My sadness is so great,
Nearly all are jealous of me;
Many calumnies attack me,
And scorning spares me not.
Yet what harm have I done?
I can show a clear conscience.

Yes, the conscience is clear and the song is clear, and so these
little streams flow on, shining in the clear dawn of a golden past