A Lute of Jade | Page 6

lines! Often a door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the halls of
romance, where the reader may roam at will. With this nation of artists
in emotion, the taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance; it is the
aroma which remains and delights. The poems of the T`angs are full of
this subtle aroma, this suggestive compelling fragrance which lingers
when the songs have passed away. It is as though the Aeolian harps had
caught some strayed wind from an unknown world, and brought
strange messages from peopled stars.
A deep simplicity touching many hidden springs, a profound regard for
the noble uses of leisure, things which modern critics of life have
taught us to despise -- these are the technique and the composition and
colour of all their work.
Complete surrender to a particular mood until the mood itself
surrenders to the artist, and afterwards silent ceaseless toil until a form
worthy of its expression has been achieved --
this is the method of Li
Po and his fellows. And as for leisure, it means life with all its
possibilities of beauty and romance. The artist is ever saying, "Stay a
little while! See,
I have captured one moment from eternity." Yet it is
only in the East that poetry is truly appreciated, by those to whom
leisure to look around them is vital as the air they breathe. This
explains the welcome given by Chinese Emperors and Caliphs of
Bagdad to all roving minstrels in whose immortality, like flies in amber,
they are caught.
A Poet's Emperor

In the long list of imperial patrons the name of the Emperor Ming
Huang of the T`ang dynasty holds the foremost place. History alone
would not have immortalized his memory.* But romance is nearer to
this Emperor's life than history. He was not a great ruler, but an artist
stifled in ceremony and lost in statecraft. Yet what Emperor could
escape immortality who had Tu Fu and Li Po for contemporaries,
Ch`ang-an for his capital, and T`ai Chen of a thousand songs to wife?
Poet and sportsman, mystic and man of this world, a great polo player,
and the passionate lover of one beautiful woman whose ill-starred fate
inspired Po Chu-i, the tenderest of all their singers,** Ming Huang is
more to literature than to history. Of his life and times the poets are
faithful recorders. Tu Fu in `The Old Man of Shao-Ling' leaves us this
memory of his peaceful days passed in the capital, before the ambition
of the Turkic general An Lu-shan had driven his master into exile in far
Ssuch`uan. The poet himself is speaking in the character of a lonely old
man, wandering slowly down the winding banks of the river Kio.
--
* A.D. 685-762.
0. See and . --
"`Alas!' he murmured, `they are closed, the thousand palace doors,
mirrored in clear cool waters. The young willows and the rushes
renewing with the year -- for whom will they now grow green?'
"Once in the garden of the South waved the standard of the Emperor.
"All that nature yields was there, vying with the rarest hues.
"There lived she whom the love of the first of men had made first
among women.
"She who rode in the imperial chariot, in the excursions on sunny days.
"Before the chariot flashed the bright escort of maidens
armed with
bow and arrow.
"Mounted upon white steeds which pawed the ground, champing their
golden bits.

"Gaily they raised their heads, launching their arrows into the clouds,
"And, laughing, uttered joyous cries when a bird fell victim to their
skill."
In the city of Ch`ang-an, with its triple rows of glittering walls with
their tall towers uprising at intervals, its seven royal palaces all girdled
with gardens, its wonderful Yen tower nine stories high, encased in
marble, the drum towers and bell towers, the canals and lakes with their
floating theatres, dwelt Ming Huang and T`ai Chen. Within the royal
park on the borders of the lake stood a little pavilion round whose
balcony crept jasmine and magnolia branches scenting the air. Just
underneath flamed a tangle of peonies in bloom, leaning down to the
calm blue waters. Here in the evening the favourite reclined, watching
the peonies vie with the sunset beyond. Here the Emperor sent his
minister for Li Po, and here the great lyrist
set her mortal beauty to
glow from the scented, flower-haunted balustrade immortally through
the twilights yet to come.
What matter if the snow
Blot out the garden? She shall still recline

Upon the scented balustrade and glow
With spring that thrills her
warm blood into wine.
Once, and once alone, the artist in Ming Huang was merged in the
Emperor. In that supreme crisis of the empire and a human soul,

when the mutinous