P'AOU-YEW-KOO-YEH
1 The gourd has [still] its bitter leaves,
And the crossing at the ford is deep.
If deep, I will go through with my clothes on;
If shallow, I will do so, holding them up.
2 The ford is full to overflowing
There is the note of the female pheasant.
The full ford will not wet the axle of my carriage;
It is the pheasant calling for her mate.
The 君子 in st. 4 must be taken as addressed to the brother officers of the husband, who is described, though he is not named explicitly, in the 3d and 4th lines. The 2d line is taken interrogatively. The last 2 lines are quoted by Confucius (Ana. IX. xxvi), as illustrated in the character of Tsze-loo. Le Hung-tsoo(李閎祖; Sung dyn.) distinguishes the force of 忮 and求 ingeniously:—'忮 indicates hatred of men because of what they have; 求, shame, because of what we ourselves have not.' 用=行 or 為, 'to do'.
The rhymes are—in st. 1, 羽, 阻, cat. 5, t. 2: in 2, 音,心, cat. 7, t. 1: in 3, 思, 來, cat. 1, t. 1: in 4, 行*, 臧, cat.10.
Ode 9. Allusive and narrative. AGAINST THE LICENTIOUS MANNERS OF WEI. According to the'Little Preface', the piece was directed against duke Seuen, who was distinguished for his licentiousness, and his wife also. Choo demurs to its having this particular reference, which, however, the imperial editors are inclined to admit. Duke Seuen was certainly p. 5 of the 16th year of duke Hwan), his first wife was a monster of wickedness. According to Tso-she (on a lady of his father's harem, called E Këang (夷姜), by an incestuous connection with whom he had a son called Keih-tsze (急子), who became his heir-apparent. By and by he contracted a marriage for this son with a daughter of Ts'e, known as Seuen Këang (宣姜); but on her arrival in Wei, moved by her youth and beauty, he took her himself, and by her he had two sons,—Show (壽) and Soh (朔). E Këang hanged herself in vexation, and the duke was prevailed on, in course of time, by the intrigues of Seuen Këang, and Soh, to consent to the death of Keih-tsze, Show peristing in a noble, but fruitless, attempt to preserve his life. In the next year, the duke died, and was succeeded by Soh,when the court of Ts'e insisted on Ch'aou-peh (昭伯),another son of Seuen, marrying Seuen Këang. From this connection sprang two sons, who both became marquises of Wei, and two daughters, who married the rulers of other States;—see Tso-she on p.7 of the 2d year of duke Min.
When such was the history of the court of Wei, we can well conceive that licentiousness prevailed widely through the State. The particular reference of the ode to duke Seuen must remain, however, an unsettled question. The explanation of the different stanzas is, indeed, difficult and vexatious on any hypothesis about the ode that can be formed.
St. 1. The p'aou is no doubt, the bottle gourd,called also 葫, or 壺, 蘆. When the fruit has became thoroughly hard and ripe, the shell, emptied of its contents, can be used as a bladder. We often see one or more tied to boat-children on the Chinese rivers, to keep them afloat, should they fall into the water, till they can be picked up. The gourd in the text had still its leaves on it; the fruit was not yet hard enough to serve the purpose of a bladder in crossing a stream. 濟=渡處, 'a ford or ferry'. So, both Maou and Choo. Le Kwang-te takes the character as the name of the river Tse. 涉 means 'to wade', to cross the ford on foot. In st. 4, however, we must take it differently.
3 The wild goose, with its harmonious notes,
At sunrise, with the earliest dawn,
By the gentleman, who wishes to bring home his bride,
[Is presented] before the ice is melted.
4 The boatman keeps beckoning;
And others cross with him, but I do not.
Others cross with him, but I do not;—
I am waiting for my friend.
厲 means to go through the water, without taking one's clothes off; while 揭 (k'e) denotes to go through,holding the clothes up. The Urh-ya says that when the water only comes up to the knees, we may k'e it; when it rises above the knees, we can wade it (涉); but when it rises above the waist, we must le it. The 3d and 4th lines are quoted in the Ana. XIV. xiii. to illustrate,apparently, the propriety of acting according to circumstances; and so Maou and Choo try to explain them here. Yen Ts'an, however, seems to me to take them more naturally. The first two lines are intended to show the error of licentious connections. The ford should not be attempted, when there are not the proper appliances for crossing it. The last two lines show the recklessness of the parties against whom the piece is directed. They are determined to cross in one way or another.
St. 2. 瀰 denotes 'the full or swollen appearance of the water'. 有 is used as in 有忡, in VI. 2. It gives a vivid or descriptive force to the character that follows it,—as in the reduplication of adjectives which is so common. 有鷕 in the same way denotes the note of the female pheasant. 軌 is here the axle of the carriage;not as Choo says, the rut or trace of the wheel. The character should be 軓. Both Maou and Choo take牡 as= 'a male quadruped', saying that the male and female of birds are expressed by 雄 and 雌, while for quadruped we have 牡 and 牝; but this distinction is not always observed. We have in the She itself 雄狐for 'a male fox', and in the Shoo, 牝鷄 for 'a female fowl'. To suppose that the female pheasant is here calling to her a male quadruped is too extravagant.—The explanation of the stanza is substantially the same as that of the preceding.
St, 3. This stanza is of a different character, and indicates the deliberate formal way in which marriages ought to be contracted,—in contrast with the haste and indecencies of the parties in the poet's mind. When the bridegroom wanted to have the day fixed for him to meet his bride and conduct her to his house, he sent a live wild goose, at early dawn, to her family. Why that bird was employed, and why that early hour was selected for the ceremony, are points on which we need not here enter. This was done, it is said, 'before the ice was melted' implying that the concluding ceremony would take place later. The meaning is that no forms should be omitted, and no haste shown in such an important thing as marriage.
According to this view, the stanza is parenthetical and explanatory. 雝雝 denotes 'the harmony of the goose's notes', which may be doubted. 鴈, from the pictures of it, should be the Bean goose, Ansersegetum. 旭 is 'the appearance of sunrise'. 如= 'if', almost= our 'when'. 歸妻= 'to bring his wife home'. (使之來歸於己). 迨,—as in ii. IX.
St. 4. 招 is 'to beckon', 'to call with the hand'. The repetition of it vividly represents the calling. 舟子,'boat-son',=the master of the ferry boat. 涉 is here to cross the ferry in the boat, and not to wade through it on foot. Yen Ts'an keeps here, indeed, the latter meaning of the term, which is the only one given in the dict.; but to do so, he is obliged to construe the first line,—'I keep beckoning to the boatman', in which it is impossible to agree with him.
