“Since last autumn I have lived in a dazed stupor.  Amid the clamour of the daytime, I have sometimes forced myself to laugh and talk; but alone at night I have done nothing but weep.  Or, if I have fallen asleep my dreams have always been full of the sorrows of parting.  Often I dreamt that you came to me as you used to do, but always before the moment of our joy your phantom vanished from my side.  Yet, though we are still bedfellows in my dreams, when I wake and think of it the time when we were together seems very far off.  For since we parted, the old year has slipped away and a new year has begun....

“Ch`ang-an is a city of pleasure, where there are many snares to catch a young man’s heart.  How can I hope that you will not forget one so sequestered and insignificant as I?  And indeed, if you were to be faithful, so worthless a creature could never requite you.  But our vows of unending love—­those I at least can fulfil.

“Because you are my cousin, I met you at the feast.  Lured by a maid-servant, I visited you in private.  A girl’s heart is not in her own keeping.  You ’tempted me by your ballads’[8] and I could not bring myself to ’throw the shuttle.’[9]

[8] As Ssu-ma tempted Cho Wen1-chuun, second century B.C.

[9] As the neighbour’s daughter did to Hsieh Kun (A.D. fourth century), in order to repel his advances.

“Then came the sharing of pillow and mat, the time of perfect loyalty and deepest tenderness.  And I, being young and foolish, thought it would never end.

“Now, having ’seen my Prince,’[10] I cannot love again; nor, branded by the shame of self-surrender, am I fit to perform ’the service of towel and comb’;[11] and of the bitterness of the long celibacy which awaits me, what need is there to speak?

[10] Odes I. 1., X. 2.

[11] = become a bride.

“The good man uses his heart; and if by chance his gaze has fallen on the humble and insignificant, till the day of his death, he continues the affections of his life.  The cynic cares nothing for people’s feelings.  He will discard the small to follow the great, look upon a former mistress merely as an accomplice in sin, and hold that the most solemn vows are made only to be broken.  He will reverse all natural laws—­as though Nature should suddenly let bone dissolve, while cinnabar resisted the fire.  The dew that the wind has shaken from the tree still looks for kindness from the dust; and such, too, is the sum of my hopes and fears.

“As I write, I am shaken by sobs and cannot tell you all that is in my heart.  My darling, I am sending you a jade ring that I used to play with when I was a child.  I want you to wear it at your girdle, that you may become firm and flawless as this jade, and, in your affections, unbroken as the circuit of this ring.

“And with it I am sending a skein of thread and a tea-trough of flecked bamboo.  There is no value in these few things.  I send them only to remind you to keep your heart pure as jade and your affection unending as this round ring.  The bamboo is mottled as if with tears, and the thread is tangled as the thoughts of those who are in sorrow.  By these tokens I seek no more than that, knowing the truth, you may think kindly of me for ever.