Classification of the pieces from their form and style.

3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are
hymns, and of others the nature can hardly be indicated by any English
denomination They have often been spoken of by the general name of odes,
understanding by that term lyric poems that were set to music.

My reason for touching here on this point is the earliest account of the
Shih, as a collection either already formed or in the process of
formation, that we find in Chinese literature. In the Official Book of
Kau, generally supposed to be a work of the twelfth or eleventh century
B.C., among the duties of the Grand Music-Master there is 'the
teaching,' (that is, to the musical performers,) 'the, six classes of
poems:--the Fang; the Fu; the Pi; the Hsing; the Ya; and the Sung.' That
the collection of the Shih, as it now is, existed so early as the date
assigned to the Official Book could not be; but we find the same account
of it given in the so-called Confucian Preface. The Fang, the Ya, and
the Sung are the four Parts of the classic described in the preceding
paragraph, the Ya embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the
Kingdom. But what were the Fu, the Pi, and the Hsing? We might suppose
that they were the names of three other distinct Parts or Books. But
they were not so. Pieces so discriminated are found in all the four
Parts, though there are more of them in the first two than in the others.

The Fu may be described as Narrative pieces, in which the writers tell
what they have to say in a simple, straightforward manner, without any
hidden meaning reserved in the mind. The metaphor and other figures of
speech enter into their composition as freely as in descriptive poems in
any other language.