“Waiting for the Unicorn”
P’eng Sun-yü (Chün-sun; HSIEN-MEN), official, poet, and calligrapher, was a native of Hai-yen, Chekiang province. He passed the chin-shih examination in 1659 before he was twenty years old, and began what was to be a successful life in government service. He was appointed to a number of different posts of significance, including that of director of the State Historiographer’s Office. His greatest distinction was placing first among the 152 scholars who participated in the pohsüeh hung-tz’u examination held on 11 April 1679. (A total of 188 candidates were summoned to take on the examination, but thirty-six declined. Of the remaining 152 who took the examination, 102 failed.)
Although P’eng Sun-yü’s shih poetry is overshadowed by that of Wang Shih-chen (q.v.), with whose name his is often linked, it is admired nonetheless and sometimes compared to that of the so-called Ten Talents of the Ta-li era of T’ang times. Wang Shih-chen regarded P’eng as the best lyric poet of the age, and he is certainly one who contributed importantly to the revival of that form in the seventeenth century. He left five collections of verse, all of which are to be found in the Sung-kuei t’ang ch’üan-chi (Complete Works from the Hall of Pine and Cassia), which was printed by his son in 1743.
(Daniel Bryant and William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
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1.Lien-che Tu, ECCP, 2:616.
A sense of autumn grows daily more sparse and open;
The look of nightfall scatters a gentle rain.
A lofty breeze comes from beyond the heavens,
To blow in the boughs of my solitary pine.
Fluttering, murmuring, verdure falls from above
To mingle wanly with the clouds’ gray gloom.
Dark and distant, wintry waves are born;
Faintly I hear the dripping of fragrant dew.
A man in seclusion among the stony crags,
Embraces this, honoring what lies beyond the world.
Would that with a mind for the year turning cold1
I might preserve and prolong this fading evening.
(SKTCC, 4:2a)
(Tr. Daniel Bryant)
I
From withered trees we gather the silkworm floss;
A single day’s weaving adds up to a yard or more.
We sell it off to people from south of the River;
How reckless and spendthrift those south-of-the-River girls!
II
Mounted on a mule, to ford the shallow stream,
Don’t choose a place where there’s no one about.
A tender bride without her husband along,
May spur on her mule, but she’ll never get away!
(Nos. 2 and 3 from a series of 3; SKTCC, 6:19a-19b)
(Tr. Daniel Bryant)
Mooring in the Evening at Plum Village
As the tenth month comes to a river district,
The look of things has turned autumnal and bare.
The harvest now in, a mood of joy is called for;
With no officials, public manners are improved.
There is smoke over the village from a temple as winter approaches;
Torchlight in the grove as people come home in the evening.
Lately, I have been making plans to move;
This neighborhood would be a perfect choice!
(No. 2 from a series of 2; SKTCC, 14:10a)
(Tr. Daniel Bryant)
In the evening I gaze out from atop a high tower;
The sun’s radiance in the forest has been clear all day.
On Lonely Mountain the autumn garrison is cold,
Up the three branches of the Mao River the night tides are born.
Fishermen’s fires appear out in the main current,
Gull-topped waves stay bright all night long.
It’s time for our boat to stop for a moment:
The misty moon is just too filled with feeling.
(No. 2 from a series of 25; SKTCC, 14:8a-8b)
(Tr. William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
Tune: Sheng-ch’a tzu
Title: A Traveler’s Night
Only a little drunk, I couldn’t quite reach the Happy Land;3
But only felt the heavy spring chill.
With whom do I share my pillow and mat?
Night after night I share it with sorrow.
Dreams so good they just seem to be real;
An affair over, it only seems like a dream.
I get up and stand without a word
As the waning moon appears above the western lane.
(SKTCC, 38:4b; YLT, p. 4)
(Tr. William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
Tune: Pu-suan tzu (Song of Divination)
Title: Summer Solstice
Just past those distressing days of languor,
And the rainy season of the Yellow Plum,
I try to roll up the door curtain, lean for a while on the railing,
As a light rain blows red tartness about.4
Too hurriedly the span of a hundred years,
How sorely we regret our past mistakes.
Days to come will be as long as those gone by,5
And I’ve no idea what to do.
(SKTCC, 38:9a; YLT, p. 8)
(Tr. William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
NOTES
1. Confucius noted that it is only after winter comes that we discover pine and cypress keep their foliage.
2. Located north of Hangchow Bay about fifty miles southwest of Shanghai in modern Chekiang province. Although there are several “Lonely Mountains,” none are identifiable in the immediate vicinity of Tang Lake. The Mao River (line 4) emerges from T’ai-hu (Great Lake) and breaks into three channels which eventually join the Wu-sung River.
3. The early T’ang poet Wang Chi (590?–644) wrote an essay entitled “An Account of Drunken Land” (“Tsui-hsiang chi”) in praise of the pleasant oblivion brought on by wine.
4. The “red tartness” seems to be a poetic concoction produced by combining the aroma of ripe plums (tartness) with the blossoms (red) of the plum tree which are blow about in the wind and rain.
5. This is both a figurative statement about the poet’s future and a literal description of those days before and after the summer solstice. Compare the term k’un-jen t’ien, used in line 1, which refers to the first hot days of summer and probably also the the inauspicious fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
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