THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

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288 THE BOOK OF POETRY. [PART III.
North of the Heah, on Wei, she shone,
The child of a great House.
Then Wan, to years of manhood grown,
Tendered to her his vows.
5 Like a fair denizen of Heaven
Was she to whom those vows were given.
The gifts he sent were deemed complete,
And to the Wei, his bride to meet,
Our Wan in person went.
A bridge of boats across the stream
He made, as did her state beseem.
She crossed ; to Chow they held their way.
Great was the glory of the day,
And^lorious the event !
6 Heaven thus its grand appointment made,
And Wan to all the land displayed,
While still he ruled in Fung.
Sin's eldest daughter was the wife,
Whom Heaven prepared to bless his life,
And take his virtuous mother's place.
And Heaven soon gave them further grace;
'Twas from them king Woo sprung.
Heaven kept and helped the child, until
Its summons to him came.
Then Woo marched forth to do its will,
Smote Yin, and won his fame.
7 Countless as forest leaves, Yin's hosts,
Collected from its utmost coasts,
Were marshalled in Muh's famous plain,
To meet king Woo ;—but all in vain.
Chow to the crisis rose.
Woo viewed their multitudes with fear,
But Shang-foo's words soon gave him cheer:
" With you is God ; your doubts dispel.
With Him as helper, we shall quell
The pride of all our foes."
8 Vast was the plain. Each sandal car,
That brightly shone amidst the war,
Dashed rapidly along.
BK I. in.] THE BOOK OF POETET. 289
Each team of steeds, black-maned and bay,
Against all obstacles made way.
Like mighty eagle on the wing,
Shang-foo was ever near the king,
Whose heart was thus made strong.
At the first charge Yin's troops gave way,
And took to shameful flight.
That morn a long and brilliant day
Displaced the previous night. ^
in.
The Meen ; metaphorical and narrative. THE SMALL BEGINNINGS
AND SUBSEQUENT GROWTH OF THE HOUSE OP CHOW. ITS REMOVAL
FEOM PIN UNDER T'AN-POO, AND SETTLEMENT IN CHOW, DOWN TO
THE TIME OP KIN(J WAN.
The gradual rise of the House of Chow has been adverted to in the notes
on the title of Part I. T'an-foo, it is there stated, removed with his tribe
from Pin to the plain of Chow in B.C. 1325 ; and we have here an eloquent
account of his labours in founding the new settlement. . Duke Lew,
to whom is ascribed the previous settlement of the tribe in Pin, in B.C.
1796, is celebrated in the second Book of this Part; but what we read
of T'an-foo, in the first stanza of this piece, is not reconcileable with the
accounts of his distant predecessor, nor with the sketch of life in Pin in
I. xv. I.
Of the circumstances in which T'an-foo moved from Pin, see a graphic
account in Mencius, I. ii. XV. His wife was a Keang. She is called
T'ae-keang, and also Chow ke'ang. Mount .K'e, called also " Pillar of the
Sky," is 10 le north-east from the district city of K'e-shan. department
Fung-ts'eang.
Stanzas 5 to 7 describe the processes and progress in erecting the
buildings of the new settlement,—under the direction of a Superintendent
of Works, and a Minister of Instruction. Out of these two appointments,
no doubt, grew the ministers whose functions are described in the Book of
History and the Ritual of Chow. It is interesting to observe that the
first public building taken in hand was the ancestral temple. The chief
would make a home for the Spirits of his fathers before he made a palace
for himself.
Stanza 8 brings us to king Wan. The story of the chiefs of Joo and
Juy, two States on the east of the Ho, is this :—They had a quarrel about
some territory to which each of them laid claim. They went to lay the
matter before the lord of Chow ; and as soon as they entered his State,
they saw the ploughers readily yielding the furrow, and travellers yielding
the path, to one another, while men and women avoided one another on
the road, and none of the old people had burdens to carry. When they
got to his court, they beheld the officers of each inferior grade giving place
to those above them. All this made them ashamed of their own quarrel.
VOL. III. 19