SUNG YÜ
3rd and 4th centuries b.c.
[Nephew of the famous Ch'ü P'ing, and like his uncle a statesman and a poet. His poems are included among the “Rhapsodies of Ch‘u.”]
WIND.
KING Hsiang of the Ch'u State was strolling in the palace on the Epidendrum Terrace, with Sung Yü and Ching Ch'a in attendance. A breeze suddenly got up, causing the king to draw his robe across his breast as a protection. “The air bites shrewdly,” he said; “do I, the sovereign and my people feel it alike?” Sung Yü replied, “This breeze belongs to your Majesty alone; how could the people share it?” “But wind,” said the king, “is a vivifying principle of the universe; it is universally exhilarating, and it does not distinguish in its favours between those who are honoured and exalted and those who are humble and lowly. You, sir, just now spoke as if the breeze belonged personally to me, the sovereign. How is this so?” “I have learnt from my teacher,” answered Sung Yü, “that forks in the mulberry-tree invite nests and that hollows and holes invite wind, the reason in each case being the different qualities of wind.” “But where does wind come from?” asked the king. “Wind,” replied Sung Yü, “is produced on the earth, and rises from the tips of the green duck-weed leaves; it rushes wildly through ravines and valleys, and roars loudly in large holes. Climbing the slopes of Mt. T‘ai, it dances beneath the pines and the cypresses, with streams of whirling water, with angry flashes of flying flames and peals of booming thunder. Now, back to the holes while blowing from every quarter, flinging about stones, breaking off the ends of branches and destroying the undergrowth of the forest.
