Part 25 (1/2)

Heaven is letting down its net, And many (are the calamities in it).

(Good) men are going away, And my heart is sorrowful. Heaven is letting down

[1. By 'the net of crime' we are to understand the mult.i.tude of penal laws, to whose doom people were exposed. In stanza 6, Heaven is represented as letting it down.

2. Compare ode 9 of the fourth decade in the former Part.]

its net, And soon (all will be caught in it). (Good) men are going away, And my heart is sad.

Right from the spring comes the water bubbling, Revealing its depth. The sorrow of my heart,--Is it (only) of to-day? Why were these things not, before me? Or why were they not after me? But mysteriously great Heaven Is able to strengthen anything. Do not disgrace your great ancestors This will save your posterity[1].

ODE 11, STANZAS 1 AND 2. THE SHaO MIN.

THE WRITER APPEALS TO HEAVEN, BEMOANING THE MISERY AND RUIN WHICH WERE GOING ON, AND SHOWING HOW THEY WERE DUE TO THE KING'S EMPLOYMENT OF MEAN AND WORTHLESS CREATURES.

Compa.s.sionate Heaven is arrayed in angry terrors. Heaven is indeed sending down ruin, Afflicting us with famine, So that the people are all wandering fugitives. In the settled regions, and on the borders, all is desolation.

Heaven sends down its net of crime;--Devouring insects, who weary and confuse men's minds, Ignorant, oppressive, negligent, Breeders of confusion, utterly perverse:--These are the men employed.

[1. The writer in these concluding lines ventures to summon the king to repentance, and to hold out a hope that there might come a change in their state. He does this, believing that all things are possible with Heaven.]

IV. LESSONS FROM THE STATES.

ODES AND STANZAS ILl.u.s.tRATING THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE WRITERS AND THEIR TIMES.

IT has been stated in the Introduction, p. 276, that the first Part of the s.h.i.+h, called the Kwo Fang, or 'Lessons from the States,' consists of 160 pieces, descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal states into which the kingdom of Kau was divided. Nearly all of them are short; and the pa.s.sages ill.u.s.trating the religious views and practices of their times are comparatively few. What pa.s.sages there are, however, of this nature will all be found below. The pieces are not arranged in decades, as in the Odes of the Kingdom, but in Books, under the names of the states in which they were produced.

Although the Kwo Fang form, as usually published, the first Part of the s.h.i.+h, nearly all of them are more recent in their origin than the pieces of the other Parts. They bring us face to face with the states of the kingdom, and the ways of their officers and people for several centuries of the dynasty of Kau.

BOOK II. THE ODES OF SHaO AND THE SOUTH.

THE Shu and previous portions of the s.h.i.+h have made us familiar with Shao, the name of the appanage of s.h.i.+h, one of the princ.i.p.al ministers at the court of Kau in the first two reigns of the dynasty. The site of the city of Shao was in the present department of Fang-khiang, Shen-hsi.

The first possessor of it, along with the still more famous duke of Kau, remained at court, to watch over the fortunes of the new dynasty. They were known as 'the highest dukes' and 'the two great chiefs,' the duke of Kau having charge of the eastern portions of the kingdom, and the other of the western. The pieces in this Book are supposed to have been produced in Shao, and the princ.i.p.alities south of it within his jurisdiction, by the duke.

ODE 2. THE ZHaI FAN.

CELEBRATING THE INDUSTRY AND REVERENCE OF A PRINCE'S WIFE, a.s.sISTING HIM IN SACRIFICING.

We must suppose the ladies of a harem, in one Of the states of the south, admiring and praising in these simple stanzas the way in which their mistress discharged her duties. A view of the ode maintained by many is that the lady gathered the southernwood, not to use it in sacrificing, but in the nurture, of the silkworms under her care; but the evidence of the characters in the text is, on the whole, in favour of the more common view. Constant reference is made to the piece by Chinese moralists, to show that the most trivial things are accepted in sacrifice, when there are reverence and sincerity in the presenting of them.

One critic asked Ku Hsi whether it was conceivable that the wife of a prince did herself what is here related, and he replied that the poet said so. Another has observed that if the lady ordered and employed others, it was still her own doing. But that the lady did it herself is not incredible, when we consider the simplicity of those early times, in the twelfth century B.C.

She gathers the white southernwood, By the ponds, on the islets. She employs it, In the business of our prince.

She gathers the white southernwood, Along the streams in the valleys.