Dynasty: Tang Dynasty Author: Han
chang handed me this tracing, from the stone drums, advised me to try Shigu Song. Du Fu has gone. Li Bai is dead, what can my poor talent do for the stone drums?. When the Zhou power waned and China was bubbling, emperor Xuan, up in wrath, waved his holy spear. And opened his Great Audience, receiving all the tributes, of kings and lords who came to him with a tune of clanging weapons. Yu Qi Yang Cheng Xiongjun, fallen birds and animals were strewn three thousand miles. And the exploit was recorded, to inform new generations, cut out of jutting cliffs, these drums made of stone. On which poets and artisans, all of the first order, had indited and chiselled-were set in the deep mountains. It's raining, moxibustion, wild fire, and ghosts guarding you. Oh. Where can he have found the tracing on this paper?, true to the original, not altered by a hair. The meaning deep, the phrases cryptic, difficult to read, and the style of the characters neither square nor tadpole. Time has not yet vanquished the beauty of these letters, the sword is sharp. Like phoenix-mates dancing, like angels hovering down, like trees of jade and coral with interlocking branches. Like golden cord and iron chain tied together tight, like incense-tripods flung in the sea, like dragons mounting heaven. Historians, gathering ancient poems, forgot to gather these, to make the two Books of Musical Song more colourful and striking. Confucius journeyed in the west, but not to the Qin Kingdom, he chose our planet and our stars but missed the sun and moon. Well, it's too late to live in the past, and, thinking of these wonderful things, cannot hold back my tears. I remember, when I was awarded my highest degree, during the first year of Yuanhe. How a friend of mine, then at the western camp, offered to assist me in removing these old relics. I bathed and changed, then made my plea to the college president, and urged on him the rareness of these most precious things. They could be wrapped in rugs, be packed and sent in boxes, ten drums only carry a few camels. To grace the Imperial Temple like the Incense-Pot of Gao, or their lustre and their value would increase a hundredfold. If the monarch would present them to the university, where students could study them and doubtless decipher them. And multitudes, attracted to the capital of culture, from all corners of the Empire, would be quick to gather. We could scour the moss, pick out the dirt, restore the original surface, and lodge them in a fitting and secure place for ever. Covered by a massive building with wide eaves, where nothing more might happen to them as it had before. But government officials grow fixed in their ways, and never will initiate beyond old precedent. So herd-boys strike the drums for fire, cows polish horns on them, with no one to handle them reverentially. Still ageing and decaying, soon they may be effaced, six years I have sighed for them, chanting toward the west. The familiar script of Wang Xizhi, beautiful though it was, could be had, several pages, just for a few white geese. But now, eight dynasties after the Zhou, and all the wars over, why should there be nobody caring for these drums. The Empire is at peace, the government free, poets again are honoured and Confucians and Mencians. An Neng is still on the list, it needs indeed an eloquent flow, like a cataract. But, alas, my voice has broken, in my song of the stone drums, to a sound of supplication choked with its own tears.
Shigu Song
Dynasty: Tang Dynasty Author: Wei Yingwu
Zhou Xuanda hunted the sun of Xi Qi, and carved stones to show his achievements.
if the stone is like a drum, the number will stop at ten, and the wind and rain will make the moss astringent. Nowadays, people take off their papers, and
when they strike, they both sweep away the white and black points. Suddenly, the volume was full of unknowns, and I was shocked and sneaked away.
wheezing and correcting mistakes are the works of Xuanwang's ministers.
this book is left between heaven and earth, and its essence will last forever. Qin's ancestral dragon also carved stones, and
Jieshi's Li Si trace. The world is so ancient that it is passed on, but it is far from this.