More Translations from the Chinese By Arthur Waley This book is not intended to be representative of Chinese literature as a whole. I have chosen and arranged chronologically various pieces which interested me and which it seemed possible to translate adequately. An account of the history and technique of Chinese poetry will be found in the introduction to my last book. Learned reviewers must not suppose that I have failed to appreciate the poets whom I do not translate. Nor can they complain that the more famous of these poets are inaccessible to European readers; about a hundred of Li Po's poems have been translated, and thirty or forty of Tu Fu's. I have, as before, given half my space to Po Chü-i, of whose poems I had selected for translation a much larger number than I have succeeded in rendering. I will give literal versions of two rejected ones: EVENING [a.d. 835] Water's colour at-dusk still white;Sunsets glow in-the-dark gradually nil.Windy lotus shakes [like] broken fan;Wave-moon stirs [like] string [of] jewels.Crickets chirping answer one another;Mandarin-ducks sleep, not alone.Little servant repeatedly announces night;Returning steps still hesitate. IN EARLY SPRING ALONE CLIMBING THE T'IEN-KUNG PAGODA [a.d. 389] T'ien-kung sun warm, pagoda door open;Alone climbing, greet Spring, drink one cup.Without limit excursion-people afar-off wonder at me;What cause most old most first arrived! While many of the pieces in "170 Chinese Poems" aimed at literary form in English, others did no more than give the sense of the Chinese in almost as crude a way as the two examples above. It was probably because of this inconsistency that no reviewer treated the book as an experiment in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer. In the present work I have aimed more consistently at poetic form, but have included on account of their biographical interest two or three rather unsuccessful versions of late poems by Po Chü-i. For leave to reprint I am indebted to the editors of the English Review, Nation, New Statesman, Bulletin of School of Oriental Studies, and Reconstruction. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.