Li Po (701–762)
I love the Master, Meng Hao-jan,
A free spirit known the whole world through.
In the flush of youth he spurned the cap and carriage,
4 And rests now, white-haired with age, among clouds and pines.
Drunk in moonlight, often “smitten by the sage,”
Or led astray by flowers, he does not serve his lord.
The highest mountain—how can I look to climb it?
8 I can do no more than kneel to his pure fragrance.
Translated by Stephen Owen
Late Bloomer at the Front of My Garden
Li Po
A Queen Mother of the West1 peach tree is planted in my yard;
After three thousand warming springs,
it finally had a flower.
This strain and delay producing a fruit
was laughed at all around,
But when I climbed up to pick it, aah, aah, I sighed aloud.
Translated by Elling Eide
Li Po
I ran into Tu Fu by a Rice Grain Mountain,
In a bamboo hat with the sun at high noon.
Hasn’t he got awfully thin since our parting?
It must be the struggle of writing his poems.
Translated by Elling Eide
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight1
Li Po
Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,
No friends at hand, so I poured alone;
I raised my cup to invite the moon,
Turned to my shadow, and we became three.
Now the moon had never learned about my drinking,
And my shadow had merely followed my form,
But I quickly made friends with the moon and my shadow;
To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring.
Whenever I sang, the moon swayed with me;
Whenever I danced, my shadow went wild.
Drinking, we shared our enjoyment together;
Drunk, then each went off on his own.
But forever agreed on dispassionate revels,
We promised to meet in the far Milky Way.
Translated by Elling Eide
Li Po
Moonlight in front of my bed—
I took it for frost on the ground!
I lift my head, gaze at the bright moon,
lower it and dream of home.
Translated by Burton Watson
Li Po
1
Ages have passed since the stately Odes flourished,
I am growing old and there is no one else to present them;
The folk songs became tangled with creeping grasses,
In the Warring Kingdoms, thorny bushes grew thickly.
Dragons and tigers devoured each other,
Armed hostilities lasted until rabid Ch’in;
How feeble had the orthodox tradition grown!
In its place arose the sad and complaining bard.
Yang and Ssu-ma revived Ch’ü Yüan’s declining ripples,1
And opened a new current which reached a boundless swell;
Although there has been a myriad of changes in its fortune,
Ars poetica finally sank into oblivion.
Ever since the Chien-an period at the end of the Han,
Prettiness itself has not been considered fine enough;
In our own hallowed age, we have returned to antiquity,
Our majestic monarch values purity and truth.
The assembled talents are handsome and smart,
“They have mounted fate’s carriage and joined the leaping dragons”;
Style and substance glitter together—
A host of stars spread over the Autumn Sea.
My determination is but “to edit and transmit,”2
So that this brilliance may shine through a thousand springs;
If my task is accomplished, I would hope, like the sage,
To lay down my brush with the capture of the unicorn.
21
There was a sojourner in Ying who intoned “White Snows,”
The reverberations flew to the cerulean sky;
His effort was wasted in singing this tune,
In the whole world, there was no one who could follow his song.
But when he tried “Scamp from Szechwan,”
Those who joined him numbered in the thousands;
He swallowed his grief but what could he say?
In vain was his sorrowful sighing.
54
My sword at my waist, I climb a high tower,
Pensive, I view the springtime scenery;
Dense thickets cover the layered mounds,
Rare grasses have gone into hiding in deep valleys.
The phoenix sings by the Western Sea,
It wishes to roost but has found no suitable tree;
The jackdaw, however, has a place to dwell,
Beneath the mugwort it gathers in teeming flocks.
As when the fortunes of Chin daily diminished,
I am like Juan Chi1 weeping bitterly at the road’s end.
Translated by Victor H. Mair
Li Po seems to have been born in Central Asia and might have had Turkic or other non-Han ancestors. When he was five, the family returned to China proper, settling in Mien-chou in modern Szechwan. At age twenty-five, he began to travel extensively in central and eastern China and became popular both for his abundant talent and for his eccentricity. He was recommended to the imperial court and summoned to the capital, Ch’ang-an, by Emperor Hsüan Tsung. There he became a favorite until his unconstrained behavior eventually proved offensive and he was let go. His later life was one of constant drifting and difficulty.
More than nine hundred of Li Po’s poems are still extant today, and many possess an unusual combination of boldness and grace. His works are full of the romantic and the fantastic: he had a unique ability to conceive and execute grand visions. Aptly eulogized as “a transcendant banished from heaven,” Li Po is universally recognized as one of the greatest Chinese poets of all time.
Li Po’s poem of praise echoes Meng Hao-jan’s own poetry throughout, as if to prove that the figure in the poem is indeed Meng Hao-jan (see selection 32). In line 5, “sage” is strong wine.
1. The mythical Queen Mother of the West (see selection 156, note 5), who presided over a mountain paradise in the distant west, was famous for her peaches of immortality. The trees she grew fruited only once every three thousand years.
1. For Li Po’s great contemporary, Tu Fu, see selection 37.
1. This is the first in a series of four poems under this title.
This pentasyllabic quatrain used to be known by virtually all Chinese schoolchildren.
1. Referring to the rhapsodic tradition (see selection 123 and following items) that is held to have begun with the southern Elegies of Ch’u (see selection 122).
2. What Confucius is alleged to have said of his own role in the compilation of the Classic of Odes (see selection 16).
1. See selection 18.