The western wind has blown but a few days; Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough. On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes; In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat. Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away; Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light. In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss, The garden boy is leading the cranes home.
Po Chu'i's mild humour is seen in _The Lazy Man's Song_ (A.D. 811):
I have got patronage, but am too lazy to use it; I have got land, but am too lazy to farm it. My house leaks; I am too lazy to mend it. My clothes are torn; I am too lazy to darn them. I have got wine, but I am too lazy to drink; So it's just the same as if my cellar were empty. I have got a harp, but am too lazy to play; So it's just the same as if it had no strings. My wife tells me there is no more bread in the house; I want to bake, but am too lazy to grind. My friends and relatives write me long letters; I should like to read them, but they're such a bother to open. I have always been told that Chi Shu-yeh Passed his whole life in absolute idleness. But he played the harp and sometimes transmuted metals. So even _he_ was not so lazy as I.
The finest thing in the book is perhaps Ch'u Yuan's _The Great Summons_. That is too long to quote; but we cannot resist Mr. Waley's version of a brief lyric by Li Po, _Self-Abandonment_:
I sat drinking and did not notice the dusk, Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress. Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream; The birds were gone, and men also few.
These translations may be not without their influence on English poetry; and though the Chinese spirit is not ours, the example of their exactitude and economy will not be thrown away.
COLLECTED POEMS OF LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS. Secker. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
In a note Lord Alfred Douglas observes that all great art is founded on morality; and that "good poetry is made up of two things: style and sincerity." These apophthegms are brief and unelaborate but indisputable. Unfortunately he proceeds to say that poetry has never sunk so low as now, and that "there is not a good poet among the lot," which suggests that he does not know where to look for poetry. He is out of touch with the time, and it is unfortunate for him. Again and again as we read his collection we feel that he is the last of the pre-Raphaelites, clothing genuine feelings in a faded vesture, and images and words gone stale. He has improved. His earliest poems might well have been left out; his latest include several sonnets (notably that beginning "I have been profligate of happiness") which have been, and deserve to be, in the anthologies. But the last exactitude of statement he seldom, as yet, has achieved; and his feelings about persons come out much more strongly and convincingly than his feelings about Nature or the eternal. This edition has a portrait.