by Li He
2. “Jade Dragon” was a favourite name for a sword during Tang times.
Song: Great Dike
Irregular: 3 rhymes
A girl from Hen-tang, near Nanjing, is begging her love not to linger in the gay quarters of Ta-ti (“Great Dike”) but to come home quickly. Ta-ti, near Xiang-yang, in south Hubei, was famous for its wine and its brothels. Hen-tang was also noted for its singing-girls, one of whom is here begging her lover to stay away from her rivals.
1. “Bright moons”—pearls.
2. Great delicacies for the gourmet. The girls are tempting their clients with the promise of such delicacies.
Music for Strings from Shu
5-character: 2 rhymes
Name of a type of yue-fu ballad.
1. Lotuses on calm water.
2. The Zhuo-jin river in Sichuan (Shu).
3. She weeps tears of blood at the thought of the dangers her lover must endure while journeying downriver through the terrifying Qu-tang Gorge, Sichuan.
Su Xiao Xiao’s Tomb
Irregular: 3 rhymes
Su Xiao-xiao was a renowned singing-girl from Qian-tang (Hangzhou) who lived during the Southern Qi dynasty (479–502). A tomb, said to be hers, in Jia-xing county, north Zhejiang, was destroyed by fanatical Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. The Tang writer, Li Shen, recounts the story that sounds of music and singing could be heard coming from the tomb on stormy nights.
1. Singing-girls rode in carriages with varnished sides. Su’s carriage may well have been buried with her.
2. The will-o’-the-wisps are like candles lit for the lovers who will never come. After burning for over 300 years, they seem faint and feeble.
3. In spite of the legend that her lovers visited her on stormy nights, she is waiting in vain. The Western Grave-mound (Xi-ling) was near Hangzhou.
A Dream of Heaven
7-character: 2 rhymes
The first four lines describe the moon; the next two the Islands of the Immortals; the last two describe the earth, all as seen from heaven.
1. Animals in the moon.
2. “Cloud Towers”—the Jade Towers of the moon.
3. Fairy-maidens in the moon ride in carriages jingling with simurgh-bells, their girdle-gems tinkling. The roads are cassia-scented because of the cassia tree there.
4. Three Islands of the Immortals endure throughout geological epochs of time, while the seas cover what was once land, then recede again.
5. An allusion to the nine provinces of the empire. The last lines suggest a famous passage in Zhuang-zi, XVII.
Song for the Boy Tang
Song of Du, Duke of Bin
7-character: 1 rhyme
This boy, Tang-er, was a young son of Du Huang-tang, Duke of Bin. His mother was a princess of the reigning house.
1. A vessel used in the Imperial Temple.
2. The horse’s tail is formed from bamboo leaves.
3. “Eastern neighbour’s daughter” is a stock expression for a pretty girl. Chinese often write characters with the forefinger, either in the air or on the palm of the hand.
Sealing up Green Prayers
A Sacrifice Performed at Night by the Taoist Master, Wu
7-character: 4 rhymes
The Sealing up of the Green Prayers was a Taoist rite. The sacrifice described in this poem was presumably to drive away the demons of plague and drought.
1. The Jade Dog was one of the guardians of Heaven.
2. The girls were handmaidens of the spirits.
3. The Father of the Primal Unity, or Emperor of Heaven.
4. Chang-an had six main highways. Droughts and plague were wreaking havoc among the people.
5. Jin Mi-di (134–86 B.C.) was a foreigner whose family acquired great wealth and power during the Former Han.
6. Yang Xiung (53–18 B.C.) was a literary man of the same period, who was so poor he once served as a common soldier. He is contrasting the affluence of the nouveau-riche foreigners (Uighurs and Tibetans) in the capital with his own plight. These lines mean: “Even if the rich die in this plague, they will have enjoyed life. Yet poor scholars like me will die filled with resentment.”
7. When calling up a ghost it was customary to use some article which the dead man had handled frequently and would recognize. Hence to summon Yang Xiung the medium would employ an antique halberd, a weapon Yang had once carried.
Twelve Lyrics for Music on the Theme of the Twelve Months of the Year (together with an Intercalary Month) Composed While Taking the Examinations in Henan-fu.
These poems were written in 809 when He was a candidate for the district examination of Henan-fu. They were almost certainly intended to demonstrate his poetic gifts to the examiners before the actual examination.
First Moon
7-character: 3 rhymes
1. One version reads: “In the first month we climb a tower to welcome spring’s return.”
2. The clepsydra, or water-clock.
3. Perhaps a reference to the cutting of willow-branches at the Cold Food Festival, held in early April.
4. When the leaves can be tied spring will really have arrived.
Second Moon
7-character: 2 rhymes
1. A ford in Henan.
2. The northern swallow is noted for its loud cry.
3. Nobody seems quite sure what this line means. A Japanese commentator translates: “In the rose-bush curtains the mist is caught and green dust is produced.” Presumably the picnic-spot is screened by roses, very much as the Japanese still curtain their cherry-viewing picnics (hanami).
4. At sunset the party ends.
Third Moon
7-character: 3 rhymes
1. A wind that blows when the sun comes out after rain.
2. “They brush on their eyebrows fashionably close to their eyes.”
3. A walled road ran from the women’s apartments in the palace down to the Serpentine.
4. The Serpentine was a winding lake in the grounds of the palace.
5. For the palace-maidens who have been left behind, spring seems as melancholy as autumn, while the fallen pear-blossoms look like withered leaves.
Fourth Moon
7-character: 3 rhymes
1. The rain is scented because of the blossoms. The green haze refers to the leaves.
Fifth Moon
5-character: 2 rhymes
1. The finest wells were lined with lead. One commentator says that water drawn at break of day was known as “flowering water.” Another believes the term referred to water used for putting on cosmetics.
2. Symbols of love.
3. The sleeves or skirts of the palace dancers look like whirling snow.
4. “Sweet dew” and “fragrant sweat” refer to the perspiration of the dancers in the summer heat. The last line means that the dancers’ bodies are beaded with sweat which looks like seeds of grain.
Sixth Moon
Irregular: 2 rhymes
1. The raw silk used for their robes looks as though it has been dusted with frost. The speckled bamboo makes mats as cool as jade feels in autumn.
2. The Scarlet Emperor is Zhu Rong, guardian-spirit of the South.
Seventh Moon
3-character: 1 rhyme
1. The Milky Way.
2. The plate was put out to catch the dew.
3. Hibiscus.
4. A cloud formation which looks like terraces of white jade.
Eighth Moon
5-character: 1 rhyme
1. This couplet has the style of an old yue fu ballad.
2. This could refer either to the cricket, whose cry sounds like the reeling of silk, or to the spider.
3. “Lamp-flowers”: a peculiar twisting of the snuff of the wick, thought to be lucky.
Ninth Moon
7-character: 4 rhymes
1. “Pu-shou”: brass animal-heads into which the rings of the knockers were set.
2. “Flowers of dew”: dewdrops about to freeze.
3. “Kingfisher brocades”: autumn leaves.
4. “Cock-herald”: a term used for the palace watchmen who announced the dawn each day.
5. The kolanut tree is a symbol of autumn.
Tenth Moon
7-character: 3 rhymes
1. The water in the palace clepsydra is close to freezing.
2. The snuff of the wick forms a flower as the lamp burns: since this is a lucky omen, the lamp is said to smile. Yet it is so cold that the light the lamp gives, burning there unmoving, seems to be frozen too, as are its motionless shadows.
3. Candles in dragon-shaped holders.
4. The corridors linking the women’s apartments with the main palace were built high off the ground: hence “winged.”
5. She is melancholy as the crescent moon of winter. Clearly, the poem is concerned with one of the emperor’s neglected favourites.
Eleventh Moon
7-character: 3 rhymes
1. Or: “Go coiling into the distance, shivering.”
2. Snow.
3. Wine from Zhong-shan would make one drunk for a thousand days.
4. Both these places were in Lin-qiong county, Sichuan.
Twelfth Moon
7-character: 1 rhyme
1. The feet of the sun-crow.
Intercalary Month
Irregular: 2 rhymes
This was an extra month added from time to time to make the lunar year agree with the solar year.
1. A lunar year was composed of seventy-two periods of five days each.
2. To keep track of the months, the court astronomer would set twelve pitch-pipes on a tube and fill them with bullrush-ash. The ashes were blown from the tube when the appropriate month arrived. Since there was no tube for the intercalary month, He is clearly implying that the calendar is in disorder. This was a grave accusation since it constituted an attack on the emperor himself, who was held to regulate the seasons and the calendar through his virtuous behaviour.
3. “Western Mother”—Xi Wang Mu (the Mother who is Queen in the West) was ranked among the chief Taoist deities. The peaches of the Mother ripen only once every six thousand years and confer immortal life on all who eat them. This is another reference to the emperor’s preoccupation with the elixir of life to the neglect of his duties.
4. Xi and He were originally the charioteers of the sun. Later they were historicized as the first Directors of astronomy under the legendary sage-king, Yao. The Shu-jing (Classic of History) relates that in 2159 B.C. Zhong Kang punished Xi and He for neglecting their duties and letting the calendar fall into disorder. So the last line of our poem criticizes the dereliction of duty evidenced by the imperial minister—another thrust at the emperor. This poem, unlike the others, could not have been written in connection with He’s candidacy for the doctoral degree as its inclusion would have ensured his immediate failure.
A Ballad of Heaven
7-character: 4 rhymes
This poem is another satire directed against Emperor Xian-zong, who had commanded all the Taoist adepts of the empire to appear at his court with recipes for immortal life. These are the real Immortals. He is saying, how can we hope to imitate them?
1. The “Silver Bank” is part of the “River of Heaven” (the Milky Way).
2. The Palace of Jade, the Cassia Tree, and the fairy maidens are all found in the moon.
3. Lung-yu, daughter of Duke Mu of Qin, married the Immortal Wang Zi Qiao (the “King’s son” of line seven).
4. The jade pipes of his sheng (mouth organ) were shaped like goose-quills.
5. “Jade Grass”: a mythical plant.
6. A legendary island in the Eastern Seas, abode of the Immortal Maidens.
7. Gods and Immortals can afford to be careless of the passing of time. To them whole epochs, during which land rises out of the sea and sinks back beneath it again, are as nothing.
A Wild Song
7-character: 6 rhymes
1. In the immense stretches of time that have elapsed since the world came into being (a Buddhist insight) the wind has levelled the mountains to the plain.
2. Tian Wu, god of the waters, turns sea into dry land over geological epochs of time.
3. The peaches of the Mother who is Queen in the West ripen only once every six thousand years. During the passing of these millennia Grandfather Peng (the Chinese Methusaleh) and Wizard Xian (a doctor during the reign of Yao who became a spirit and so knew the date of every man’s death) will themselves have died countless times. For He, the so-called Immortals have a life-span as ephemeral as a gnat’s in comparison with the eons of time that the universe has endured.
4. The great Hindu master, Śri Ramana Maharshi, made this question the basis of his system of meditation. The answer is: “The Self” (ātman).
5. Song Wu-di sent Ding Wu to recover the body of his son-in-law who had fallen in battle. Later, during the reign of Song Xiao Wu-di (r. 453–64) a mournful yue-fu ballad appeared based on this event in which the words “Governor Ding” figured in a chorus. Li He is remembering this song.
6. The Lord of Ping-yuan (3rd century B.C.) was famous for his munificence in supporting large numbers of retainers. He regrets that there is now no one who would employ him as the Lord of Ping-yuan would have done.
7. He is mistaken here. The Lord of Ping-yuan ruled in Zhao but was not buried there, so the libation could not have been poured on his grave.
8. The jade toad in the water-dock, which caught the drops in its mouth.
9. Perhaps the girl with the zither who was coaxing him to drink?
10. A difficult line: it might mean “The autumn scene changes before one’s eyes to a fresh green” or “In an instant black eyebrows change to autumnal white.”
11. Why must young men waste their precious youth in a dreary scramble to become the servants of others?
Coming of Autumn
7-character: 2 rhymes
1. The cricket is called “the spinner,” since its cry sounds like the reeling of silk.
2. Before the invention of paper early in the second century A.D., books were written on slips of green bamboo which had been burnt to remove the oily outer layer. Here He is referring to his own verse, which no one will ever read.
3. Most commentators think this refers to a “bookworm.”
4. Perhaps “a dead girl’s spirit.”
5. The “Graveyard Lament” (Dai Hao-li Xing) of the fifth-century poet, Bao Zhao. He is comparing himself to Bao Zhao.
6. Zhuang-zi, XXVI, “Chang-hong died in Shu (circa 500 B.C.). Chang-hong had been unjustly put to death. Three years after his burial his blood had turned to emerald jade.” I think this means that the resentment He felt, embodied in the poem she has written (metaphorically) with his very blood, will turn into precious jade with the passage of time.
Song to the Goddess
7-character: 2 rhymes
Probably the daughters of Emperor Yao, the spirits of the river Xiang. This poem is a comment on the death of Xian-zong’s mother in the autumn of 816. This event was accompanied by destructive floods, which were taken as a sign of heaven’s displeasure with the Emperor. He is once again satirizing Xian-zong’s futile quest for the elixir of life—futile, since in spite of all his own efforts he could not save his mother.
1. An allusion to the inefficacy of the drugs which should have cured the empress. Calamus plant was thought to confer immortality.
2. A minor water-spirit of great beauty.
The King of Qin Drinks Wine
7-character: 5 rhymes
The poem is a hymn of praise to Emperor De-zong (regnet 779–805), who had died when He was only a boy of fourteen, not a eulogy of the First Emperor of Qin.
1. The eight points of the compass.
2. The military prowess of the Emperor was manifest everywhere.
3. Xi and He were charioteers of the sun.
4. A kalpa was an Indian (later Buddhist) unit of measure. A cosmic cycle of 4,320 million years constituted one kal
pa. At the end of each kalpa came a great dissolution (Mahāpralaya), when the universe was reduced to ashes. The reign of De-zong, He is saying, was a time of unexampled prosperity, a new era rising out of the ashes of the old.
5. A large wine-vessel shaped like a dragon spouted wine from its mouth for its guests.
6. The zithers (pi pa) had golden grooves on their bridges for the strings.
7. A line that has led to a good deal of speculation on the part of the commentators. Literally it reads: “Dong-ting rain feet come blow mouth organ.” The line is a complex one, fusing many images together: but the basic allusion is to the music played for the Yellow Emperor on Dong-ting lake in northern Hunan (see Zhuang-zi, XIV), which sounds like raindrops on water.
8. The phoenix is not a musical instrument, but a singer.
9. The dancers were clad in ocean-pongee (hai-shao), a rare and costly fabric said to be woven by the mermen or shark people who lived under the sea off the coast of Champa.
10. “Beautiful girls with yellow make-up.”
11. Literally: “Immortal candle-trees.” This could denote either candles decorated with paintings of Immortals or candlesticks in the shape of Immortals.
12. This refers to the palace beauties.
Pearl—A Luo-yang Beauty
7-character: 5 rhymes
1. Like a fairy.
2. Hair-ornaments.
3. Music from her Zheng which had reddish brass strings.
4. “Moths” and “willows” were synonyms for the arched, painted eyebrows of a Chinese lady. The girl is drunk, trying to forget her loneliness.
5. A reference to Mount Wu, in Shu, where a Prince Xiang made love to a goddess. “A Shu-mountain dream is a dream” about love-making.
6. The goddess of Mount Wu controlled the clouds and the rain. Hence mist (clouds and rain) here mean “an amorous dream.”
7. The last four lines are spoken by the girl herself who is contrasting her own loneliness (bird in a gilded cage!) with the lively life she once enjoyed as a singing-girl.
8. “Clouds” and “snow” stand for a man’s robes. Lu Yu was notorious for his love of wine and women.