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: 197. 小弁 - Xiao Bian

[x_los]

II. v. 3.: LAMENT OF A DEFAMED AND BANISHED PRINCE.†
There go the rooks, all flying homeward,
Flock after flock, in bustling glee;
Around me there is none unhappy,
I am alone in misery!
Wherein have I offended Heaven?
My guilt—whence doth it then accrue?
My soul is full of heaviness:
Alas, I know not what to do.
[225]
Once trodden smooth was Chow’s great highway,
All o’er it now rank grasses grow.
It grieves, it pains my heart to see it:
Each thought comes like a stunning blow.
Sleep without comfort,* sighs continual,—
My sorrow brings on age amain;
My heart is full of heaviness,
And throbs as throbs an aching brain.
The trees† around his native village
A man with fond regard must view.
I looked to none as to my father,
None than my mother found more true.
Are not these very hairs my father’s?
Hung I not once on a mother’s breast?
O that, when Heaven thus gave me being,
My time had been in time of rest!
Amid the green luxuriant willows
With clamour the cicadas grind;
And o’er the deep dark standing water
Bend rush and reed before the wind.
Myself am like a drifting vessel,
And whither destined do not know;
My soul is full of heaviness;
E’en roughest rest* must I forego.
The stag, with all his wild careering,
Still runs reluctant (from the herd).
The pheasant, crowing in the morning,
Crows but for his companion bird.
[226]
Myself am like a tree death-stricken,
Reft of its branches by disease;
My soul is full of heaviness;
How is it none my trouble sees?
See the chased hare when seeking refuge;
Some, sure, will interpose to save.
Lies a dead man upon the highway,
Some, sure, will dig for him a grave.
And should a king suppress all feeling,
And bear unmoved the sight of woe?
My soul is full of heaviness:
My tears run down in ceaseless flow.
The king lends ear to the maligner,
Responding, aye, as to a pledge.*
He lacks the charitable spirit,
Stays not to test what men allege.
In felling trees men note their leanings,
In cleaving wood they note its grain;—
(Not so with him); he clears the guilty,
And I, the guiltless, bear the pain.
Nought may be higher than a mountain,†
Nought may be deeper than a spring.
Walls may have ears: let words not lightly
Be uttered even by a king.
“Yet leave alone my fishing dam;‡
“My wicker-nets—remove them not:
“Myself am spurned;—some vacant hour
“May bring compassion for my lot.”

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