CHINESE POEMS

TRANSLATED BY

CHARLES BUDD

HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
1912

OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

The initiative of this little book was accidental. One day in the early part of last summer, feeling weary of translating commercial documents, I opened a volume of Chinese poetry that was lying on my desk and listlessly turned over the pages. As I was doing so my eye caught sight of the phrase, 'Red rain of peach flowers fell.' That would be refreshing, I said to myself, on such a day as this; and then I went on with my work again. But in the evening I returned to the book of Chinese poetry and made a free translation of the poem in which I had seen the metaphor quoted above. The translation seemed to me and some friends pleasantly readable; so in leisure hours I have translated some more poems and ballads, and these I now venture to publish in this volume, thinking that they may interest readers in other lands, and also call forth criticism that will be useful in preparing a larger volume which I, or some better qualified scholar, may publish hereafter; for it can hardly be said that the field of Chinese poetry has been widely explored by foreign students of the Chinese language.

Many of the translations in this book are nearly literal, excepting adaptations to meet the exigencies of rhyme and rhythm; but some are expanded to enable readers to understand what is implied, as well as actually written, in the original; for, after all, the chief aim of the translator of poetry should be to create around the mind of the reader the sensory atmosphere in which the mind of the poet moved when he wrote the poem. Whether I have attained a measure of success in such a very difficult task must be decided by the readers of these translations.

It should be borne in mind by students more or less familiar with the Chinese language that there are many versions of the stories and legends related in these poems, and these versions, again, have been variously interpreted by Chinese poets. A little reflection of this kind will often save a critic from stumbling into difficulties from which it is not easy to extricate himself.

A few notes are given at the end of each poem to explain historical names, &c., but not many other notes are required as the poems explain themselves. Indeed, the truth of the saying, 'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,' has been impressed on my mind deeply by this little excursion into the field of Chinese poetry, for the thoughts and words of such poems as the 'Journey Back,' 'A Maiden's Reverie,' 'Only a Fragrant Spray,' 'The Lady Lo-Fu, 'Conscripts leaving for the Frontier,' 'The River by Night in Spring,' 'Reflections on the Brevity of Life,' 'The Innkeeper's Wife,' 'A Soldier's Farewell to his Wife,' &c., show us that human nature two or three thousand years ago differed not a whit from human nature as it is to-day.

CHARLES BUDD.

Tung Wen Kwan Translation Office,
Shanghai, March, 1912.

CONTENTS