He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new nightingales,
For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nightingales,
Their sound is mixed in this flute,
Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.

It matters very little how much is due to Rihaku and how much to
Pound. Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer has observed: "If these are
original verses, then Mr. Pound is the greatest poet of this
day." He goes on to say:

The poems in "Cathay" are things of a supreme beauty. What
poetry should be, that they are. And if a new breath of
imagery and handling can do anything for our poetry, that
new breath these poems bring....

Poetry consists in so rendering concrete objects that the
emotions produced by the objects shall arise in the
reader....

Where have you better rendered, or more permanently
beautiful a rendering of, the feelings of one of those
lonely watchers, in the outposts of progress, whether it be
Ovid in Hyrcania, a Roman sentinel upon the great wall of
this country, or merely ourselves, in the lonely recesses of
our minds, than the "Lament of the Frontier Guard"?...

Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhaps it is the most
valuable thing in life; but the power to express emotion so
that it shall communicate itself intact and exactly is
almost more valuable. Of both these qualities Mr. Pound's