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: 198. 巧言 - Qiao Yan

[x_los]

II. v. 4.: A SLANDERED OFFICIAL.
O far Great Heaven! we call thee
Our Father and our Mother!
Alas that on the blameless
Such gross disorders gather!
I verily am guiltless,
Yet stern is thy displeasure.
I truly am offenceless,
Thou harsh beyond all measure.
Disorder first arises
On falsehood’s first receiving;
And gathers force when rulers
Deem slanders worth believing.
Showed but the king displeasure,
Disorder soon had vanished;
And favoured he (the worthy),
So too it soon were banished.
When kings make frequent compacts,*
Disorder grows with vigour;
When faith they put in villains,
Then cruel is its rigour.
When villains’ words are blandest,
Disorder (most) progresses;
While failure in their duty
The monarch but distresses.
Grand is the ancestral temple;
A master mind designed it.†
Well framed was our Great Charter;
Good men and wise defined it.
[228]
Whate’er be these men’s motive,
I’ll weigh it well and watch it:
Though sharp the hare, and cunning,
The dog will round and catch it!
What woods are soft and supple,—
Our wiser men will grow them.
What words are said at random,—
One’s inner sense should know them.
Ah, glib high-sounding language
But to the tongue one traces,
And artful dulcet* speeches
To men of brazen faces.
And these—who are they?—Dwellers
On a river’s swampy borders!
Yet these weak, nerveless creatures
Give rise to such disorders!
Ye ulcered, swollen-shinned ones!
How should ye be so daring?
But though ye make grand schemes, and many,
How few to follow you are caring?

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