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    CHINESE POEMS

    TRANSLATED BY

    CHARLES BUDD

    HENRY FROWDE
    OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
    LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
    1912

    OXFORD: HORACE HART
    PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




_PREFACE_


_The initiative of this little book was accidental. One day in the early
part of last summer, feeling weary of translating commercial documents,
I opened a volume of Chinese poetry that was lying on my desk and
listlessly turned over the pages. As I was doing so my eye caught sight
of the phrase, 'Red rain of peach flowers fell.' That would be
refreshing, I said to myself, on such a day as this; and then I went on
with my work again. But in the evening I returned to the book of Chinese
poetry and made a free translation of the poem in which I had seen the
metaphor quoted above. The translation seemed to me and some friends
pleasantly readable; so in leisure hours I have translated some more
poems and ballads, and these I now venture to publish in this volume,
thinking that they may interest readers in other lands, and also call
forth criticism that will be useful in preparing a larger volume which
I, or some better qualified