Gems of Chinese Literature/Han Wên-Kung-In Memoriam (of his nephew)
Seven days had elapsed after the news of thy death ere I could control my grief and collect my thoughts. I then bade one go and prepare, dear boy, some choice votive offering to thy departed spirit.
Ah, me! betimes an orphan; growing up without a father’s care; dependent solely upon an elder brother, thy father, and his wife. And when, in mid career, that brother died far away in the south, thou and I, mere boys, followed the widow home with the funeral cortège. Then our life together, orphans each, never separated for a day.
My three brothers all early died, leaving only us, a grandson and a son, to carry on the ancestral line. We were two generations, with but one body, one form, one shadow. And often when thy mother bore thee in her arms, she would point at me and say, “Of two generations of the house of Han, these are all that remain.” Thou wert too young to remember that now; and I, though I remember the words now, did not understand the sorrow that they expressed.
At sixteen, I went to the capital, returning home after the lapse of four years. Then four years more, after which I repaired to the family burying-ground, and met thee there, standing by thy mother’s grave. Another two years of official life: a short reunion during thy visit of a year: leave of absence to bring my family to my home. The next year my chief died, and I quitted my pest; but thou didst not come. In the same year another appointment elsewhere, whence the messenger sent to fetch thee had barely started ere I again had left. Once more thou camest not. Yet I knew that had we gone eastwards together it would have been but for a short time, and that I should do better to make for the west, where we might all gather round the old home.
Alas! why leave me thus and die? To me it seemed that both were young in years, and that although separated for a time, we might still hope to pass our lives together. Therefore we parted, and I went to the capital in search of place; but could I have foreseen what was to happen, the many-charioted territory of a duke should not have tempted me one moment from thy side.
Last year I wrote thee, saying, “Not forty yet: sight dim, hair gray, strength sapped. Father and brothers, lusty men all, died in their prime;―can then this decaying frame last long? I may not go: thou wilt not come. Alas! I fear lest at any moment I may be cut off and leave thee to unutterable grief.” Yet who would have thought that the young man was to perish and the old man to live? the strong youth to sink into a premature grave, the sick man to be made whole? Is it reality or a dream? Was it truth they told me? Reality―that the line of my noble-hearted brother should be thus ended in premature death? Reality―that thy pure intelligence shall not survive to continue the traditions of his house? Reality―that the young and strong thus early fade and die, while the old and decaying live on and thrive? Reality indeed it is; and no dream, and no lie. Else why this letter, this notice of death, now lying before me? It is so. The line of my noble-hearted brother has indeed been prematurely cut off. Thy pure intelligence, hope of the family, survives not to continue the traditions of his house. Unfathomable are the appointments of what men call Heaven: inscrutable are the workings of the unseen: unknowable are the mysteries of eternal truth: unrecognisable those who are destined to attain to old age!
Henceforth, my gray hairs will grow white, my strength fail. Physically and mentally hurrying on to decay, how long before I shall follow thee? If there is knowledge after death, this separation will be but for a little while. If there is no knowledge after death, so will this sorrow be but for a little while, and then no more sorrow for ever.
Thy boy is just ten; mine five. But if the young and the strong are to be thus cut off, who shall dare hope that these babes in arms may not share the same unhappy fate?
Thy last year’s letters told me of the tender foot and its increasing pains; but I said to myself, “The disease is common in Kiangnan, and need cause no alarm.” Was it then this that extinguished thy life, or some other disease that brought thee to the grave?
Thy last letter is dated 17th of the 6th moon. Yet I hear from one that death came on the 2nd, while another sends a letter without date. The messenger never thought to ask; and the family, relying on the letter’s date, never thought to tell. I enquired of the messenger, but he replied at random, so that I am still in doubt. I have now sent to sacrifice to thy departed spirit, and to condole with thy orphan and foster-mother, bidding them wait, if possible, until the final rites are paid, but if not, then to come to me, leaving the servants to watch over thy corpse. And when perchance I am able, I will some day see that thy bones are duly laid in our ancestral burying-place.
Alas! of thy sickness I knew not the time; of thy death I knew not the hour. Unable to tend thee in life, I was debarred from weeping over thee in death. I could not touch thy bier: I could not stand by thy grave. I have sinned against Heaven: I have caused thee to be cut off in thy prime. Wretch that I am, separated from thee alike in life and death―thou at one end of the earth, I at the other―thy shadow did not accompany my form, neither shall thy spirit now blend with my dreams. The fault, the blame are mine alone.
O ye blue heavens, when shall my sorrow have end? Henceforth, the world has no charms. I will get me a few acres on the banks of the Ying, and there await the end, teaching my son and thy son, if haply they may grow up,―my daughter and thy daughter, until their day of marriage comes. Alas! though words fail, love endureth. Dost thou hear, or dost thou not hear? Woe is me: Heaven bless thee!