He set up a statue of the brazen immortal on top of his Shen-ming tower. * Han Wu-ti, an emperor of the Han Dynasty, sought ardently for eternal life. The courtiers of Wei harnessed their chariots In the Mao-ling tomb lies the lad named Liu,įrom painted balustrades, the cassia trees Songs of the Brazen Immortal Bidding Farewell to Han* +++++ The moon was believed to contain a hare, a toad, and a cassia tree "shivering hare" is a kenning for "cold moon". The music makes him pause from his endless toil. ++++ The line appears to allude to Wu Gang, banished to the moon for being too assiduous in his pursuit of immortality, where he must forever unavailingly try to cut down the cassia tree growing there. +++ Lie-tzu mentions a certain Hu Ba, who was such a performer on the classical zither that fishes danced and dragons leapt whenever he played. ++ The Weird Crone was said to have been an expert performer on the vertical harp. When the demon Gong Gong butted his head against the north west pillar of heaven, tilting the earth downwards to the southeast and making a hole in the sky, Nü Gua repaired the hole by fusing minerals of five colours. + Nü Gua (or Wa) was a goddess with a snake's body, consort of Fu Hsi.
****** Purple Emperor: one of the three foremost rulers of Heaven. The light melts because music had power over the elements. ***** Both Chang-an and Luo-yang had twelve gates. Here the Peaches of Immortality were to be found. **** Mount Kun-lun was a mythical mountain in the west, said to produce the finest jade. The tune she played was so sad that he was forced to break her zither, leaving her with only a twenty-five stringed instrument. The white Girl played a zither with fifty strings for the Yellow Emperor. Their teardrops, falling on the bamboos growing by the latter's grave, left speckled marks on them. *** The Ladies of the River Hsiang are two daughters of the lengendary Emperor Yao, consorts of the Emperor Shun. Similarly, the best silk came from Wu, in southeast China, which was used to make the strings. ** Shu (Si-tzuan) was famous for its tung trees (paulownia), from which these harps were made. * Li Ping was one the emperor's musicians, from the famous Pear-graden School. Ladies of the River weeping among bamboos, Turner, S.J., Compiled and Edited by John J. from Golden Treasure of Chinese Poetry, Translated by John A. This turned out to be prophetic for Li Ho died at the age of twenty-seven. This practice infuriated his mother who thought his health might be unduly undermined. Back home at night, he would sort out what he had written and try to compose complete poems. Whenever inspired, he would immediately jot down a few lines at random, to be thrown into the bag. Each morning he would go out on a horse, followed by a boy carrying a bag on his shoulder.
His poetic style was bizarre and quite out of the ordinary, savouring very much of the ghostly world hence his nick-name, "Poet-Ghost".
LI HO (790 - 816) Li Ho was of royal blood and began to write poetry in his seventh year. Translated Chinese Poetry: Poems by Li Ho
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