The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, more than three hundred songs, odes and hymns. Tr. Legge (en) and Granet (fr, incomplete).
It floats about, that boat of cypress wood ;
Yea, it floats about on the current.
Disturbed am I and sleepless,
As if suffering from a painful wound.
It is not because I have no wine,
And that I might not wander and saunder about.
My mind is not a mirror ; –
It cannot [equally] receive [all impressions].
I, indeed, have brothers,
But I cannot depend on them,
I meet with their anger.
My mind is not a stone ; –
It cannot be rolled about.
My mind is not a mat ; –
It cannot be rolled up.
My deportment has been dignified and good,
With nothing wrong which can be pointed out.
My anxious heart is full of trouble ;
I am hated by the herd of mean creatures ;
I meet with many distresses ;
I receive insults not a few.
Silently I think of my case,
And, starting as from sleep, I beat my breast.
There are the sun and moon, –
How is it that the former has become small, and not the latter ?
The sorrow cleaves to my heart,
Like an unwashed dress.
Silently I think of my case,
But I cannot spread my wings and fly away.
Legge 26
The Book of Odes – Shi Jing I. 3. (26) – Chinese off/on – Français/English
Alias Shijing, Shi Jing, Book of Odes, Book of Songs, Classic of Odes, Classic of
Poetry, Livre des Odes, Canon des Poèmes.
The Book of Odes, The Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Three-characters book, The Book of Changes, The Way and its Power, 300 Tang Poems, The Art of War, Thirty-Six Strategies
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