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Shi Jing Introduction Table of content – The Book of Odes

The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, more than three hundred songs, odes and hymns. Tr. Legge (en) and Granet (fr, incomplete).

Section II — Minor odes of the kingdom
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Chapter 1 — 鹿 Decade of Lu Ming

161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169

Shijing II. 1. (164)

The flowers of the cherry tree –
Are they not gorgeously displayed ?
Of all the men in the world,
There are none equal to brothers.

On the dreaded occasions of death and burial,
It is brothers who greatly sympathize.
When fugitives are collected on the heights and low grounds,
They are brothers who will seek one another out.

There is the wagtail on the level height ; –
When brothers are in urgent difficulties,
Friends, though they may be good,
Will [only] heave long sighs.

Brothers may quarrel inside the walls,
But they will oppose insult from without,
When friends, however good they may be,
Will not afford help.

When death and disorder are past,
And there are tranquillity and rest ;
Although they have brothers,
[Some] reckon them not equal to friends.

Your dishes may be set in array,
And you may drink to satiety ;
But it is when your brothers are all present,
That you are harmonious and happy, with child-like joy.

Loving union with wife and children,
Is like the music of lutes ;
But it is the accord of brothers,
Which makes the harmony and happiness lasting.

For the ordering of your family,
For your joy in yor wife and children,
Examine this and study it ; –
Will you not find that it is truly so ?

Legge 164

Shi Jing II. 1. (164) IntroductionTable of content
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The Book of Odes – Shi Jing II. 1. (164) – Chinese on/offFrançais/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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