106 



Mr. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 



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IL >f- A * 



Jit« jin — jo kooiuj tsiin, 

 Kea kwo — ho tae ping .- 

 Fang che — choong hae yii, 

 Kwong che — sih keen hoen. 



Slum sih — woo yuen kin^ 

 Kan shan — choong je hing .- 

 Foong livan — sny choo hae, 

 Hing kih — puh che ming, 



" The whole people — unitedly obeying the laws. 

 The nation, as a family — will rejoice in peace : 

 Promulge it — to tlie extremities of the ocean. 

 Extend it — to the foundations of the world ! 



" The tints of the hills — are confounded in their distance, 

 As file traveller views them — to the end of his daily journey : 

 The shapes of their peaks and ridges — alter with every change of place. 

 Until the wanderer — ceases to know their names. 



Our English verse of ten syllables derives great advantage from the 

 power of varying its effect, without any prejudice to its melody, by 

 occasionally shifting the place of the caesura, — unlike the Chinese, where 

 it is Hxed and immoveable. In this, however, the latter bears some resem- 

 blance to the French alexandrine, always divided into hemistiches by the 

 caesural pause, with which the sentential pause is most commonly coin- 

 cident* — as well as to that law of the Latin hexameter, which seems to 



* ' Que toujours dans vos vers — le sens coupant les mots, 

 Suspende I'hemistiche — en marque le repos.' 



Boil. Art Poet. 



