Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Minor Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Xiao Min

[x_los]

 * I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.

Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.

* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.

**NEXT BATCH APRIL 26.**

Comments

Re: 195. 小旻 - Xiao Min

[x_los]

II. v. 1.: WORTHLESS COUNSELLORS.
Bounteous Heaven its stern displeasure
Vents* upon this lower earth.
When shall we have done with counsels
And with schemes devoid of worth?†
Be a counsel good, ’tis slighted,
Be it ill, ’tis entertained.
When I see them at such tactics
I am sore distressed and pained.
In their concord and their discord
There is much to be deplored.
Be a policy a good one,
’Tis by all of them ignored;
Let an ill one be brought forward,
Upon that they all depend.
When I see them at such tactics,
What, methinks, will be the end?
Our divining-shells, exhausted,
Tell no more what plan is right.
Counsellors are far too many,
So can never all unite.
[222]
Though the Court is filled with speakers,
Who himself dare implicate?*
Like men planning routes and never moving,
Thus it is they never get a-gate.
O the pity! in their counsels
Not the ancients are their guides,
Nor great policies their standards:
The last word they hear decides!†
The last word their sole contention!
Like men planning to erect
Homes to live in while on travel!
Nothing can they thus effect.
Though the country be unsettled,
There are wise men, and unwise;
Though the inhabitants be dwindling,
Some have sense, some can advise.
Some are grave, and some methodic.
Yet, meseems, are one and all—
Like the waters from a fountain—
Verging to a fatal fall!
Who will dare to rouse a tiger?
Who will dare to wade the Ho?
Sirs, ye know but one way only;
Not another do ye know.
Act as from a sense of danger,
With precaution and with care,—
As a yawning gulf o’erlooking,
As on ice that scarce will bear!
[223]

https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/confucius-the-shi-king-the-old-poetry-classic-of-the-chinese