Alas, that perverse life so willed it
That we met too late, after I had crossed my husband's threshold
On that fateful wedding day!"
The original poem has only sixty-two words in two aaba quatrains and a concluding couplet. It may be translated without rhyme thus:
You know I have a husband,
And you gave me a twin of pearls;
Deeply I felt your wilting love
And I strung them upon my red silk dress.
Close to the palaces soars my towering home.
And in the emperor's attendance is my husband.
Of course I know your heart, bright as the sun and moon;
But with my husband I have vowed to live till death.
With tears brimming down I return your pearls,
While grieving that we did not meet when I was not
Yet married.
After all Chinese poetry and English poetry are not as far apart as many people think and it is quite possible to turn the one in to the other in its true light with very little loss of form, or, perhaps, with no loss at all.
Dr. Hart changed the titles of quite a few poems. This seems to me unnecessary. However, the changed titles of the poems are not as fantastic and misleading as the title of the book, "The Hundred Names." There is no connection whatsoever between this anthology and the hundred surnames of the Chinese people. Well, not every one of us is a Goldsmith who could fish out perfect and beautiful titles for whatever he wrote!
In his introductory essays on the spirit, the history, and the technique of Chinese poetry, Dr. Bart committed himself to several errors. Just to point out two: Chu Yuan is not "one of the shadowy personalities that appear often, in the annals of Chinese literature" and his poem Li Sao is not "a rambling poem which seldom makes a strong appeal to the foreign reader." He is the greatest of all Chinese poets by universal consent. Indeed so great is he that he needs not our "weak witness" of his name though very uncertain do we feel about his life and birth. And his poem Li Sao, the Exile's Grief, stands with the Riad, the Divine Comedy, the Paradise Lost, etc., in spite of its shortness in length. Chinese poetry, like any other poetry, is written primarily for the ear, not for the eye.
His choice of women poets, too might be taken exception to. I wonder why Dr. Hart did not choose l'an Chch I. Past Pau, and Li Ching Chao.