Gems of Chinese Literature/Ou-yang Hsiu-An Autumn Dirge
One night, I had just sat down to my books, when suddenly I heard a sound far away towards the south-west. Listening intently, I wondered what it could be. On it came, at first like the sighing of a gentle zephyr,…gradually deepening into the plash of waves upon a surf-beat shore,…the roaring of huge breakers in the startled night, amid howling storm-gusts of wind and rain. It burst upon the hanging bell, and set every one of its pendants tinkling into tune. It seemed like the muffled march of soldiers, hurriedly advancing bit in mouth to the attack,[1] when no shouted orders rend the air, but only the tramp of men and horses meet the ear.
“Boy,” said I; “what noise is that? Go forth and see.” “Sir,” replied the boy, on his return, “the moon and stars are brightly shining: the Silver River spans the sky. No sound of man is heard without: ’tis but the whispering of the trees.”
“Alas!” I cried; “autumn is upon us.[2] And is it thus, O boy, that autumn comes?―autumn the cruel and the cold; autumn the season of rack and mist; autumn the season of cloudless skies; autumn the season of piercing blasts; autumn the season of desolation and blight! Chill is the sound that heralds its approach; and then it leaps upon us with a shout. All the rich luxuriance of green is changed; all the proud foliage of the forest swept down to earth,―withered beneath the icy breath of the destroyer. For autumn is Nature’s chief executioner; and its symbol is darkness. It has the temper of steel; and its symbol is a sharp sword. It is the avenging angel, riding upon an atmosphere of death. As spring is the epoch of growth, so autumn is the epoch of maturity:―
Its strains decay,
And melt away.
In a dying, dying fall.[3]
And sad is the hour when maturity is passed; for that which passes its prime must die.
“Still what is this to plants and trees, which fade away in their due season?…But stay: there is man, man the divinest of all things. A hundred cares wreck his heart: countless anxieties trace their wrinkles on his brow: until his inmost self is bowed beneath the burden of life. And swifter still he hurries to decay when vainly striving to attain the unattainable, or grieving over his ignorance of that which can never be known. Then comes the whitening hair;―and why not? Has man an adamantine frame, that he should outlast the trees of the field? Yet after all who is it, save himself, that steals his strength away? Tell me, O boy, what right has man to accuse his autumn blast?
“My boy made no answer. He was fast asleep. No sound reached me save that of the cricket chirping its response to my dirge.
- ↑ The Chinese have a device by which they can gag their soldiers, and so prevent them from talking in the ranks on the occasion of a night attack.
- ↑ Any old resident in China will recognise the truth of this description in regard to the change of season here indicated. In September, 1874, at Hankow, the thermometer fell something like forty degrees in less than forty-eight hours.
- ↑ A fair rendering of the text.