they settle on the bushy oaks[1]. The king's affairs must not be slackly discharged, And (so) we cannot plant our millets;—What will our parents have to rely on? O thou distant and azure Heaven[2]! When shall we be in our places again?
Ode 11. The Ko Shăng.
A wife mourns the death of her husband, refusing to be comforted, and declares that she will cherish his memory till her own death.
It is supposed that the husband whose death is bewailed in this piece had died in one of the military expeditions of which duke Hsien (B.C. 676–651) was fond. It may have been so, but there is nothing in the piece to make us think of duke Hsien. I give it a place in the volume, not because of the religious sentiment in it, but because of the absence of that sentiment, where we might expect it. The lady shows the grand virtue of a Chinese widow, in that she will never marry again. And her grief would not be assuaged. The days would all seem long summer days, and the nights all long winter nights; so that a hundred long years would seem to drag their slow course. But there is not any hope expressed of a re-union with her husband in another state. The 'abode' and the 'chamber' of which she speaks are to be understood of his grave; and her thoughts do not appear to go beyond it.
The dolichos grows, covering the thorn trees; The convolvulus spreads all over the waste[3]. The
- ↑ Trees are not the proper place for geese to rest on; and the attempt to do so is productive of much noise and trouble to the birds. The lines would seem to allude to the hardships of the soldiers' lot, called from their homes to go on a distant expedition.
- ↑ See note 2 on ode 1 of Book vi, where Heaven is appealed to in the same language.
- ↑ These two lines are taken as allusive, the speaker being led by the sight of the weak plants supported by the trees, shrubs, and tombs, to think of her own desolate, unsupported condition. But they may also be taken as narrative, and descriptive of the battleground, where her husband had met his death.
