Shijing or Shi-Jing translations from the Chinese
The Shijing or Shi-Jing or Shih-Ching (“Book of Songs” or “Book of Odes”) is the oldest Chinese poetry collection, with the poems included believed to date from around 1200 BC to 600 BC. According to tradition the poems were selected and edited by Confucius himself. Since most ancient poetry did not rhyme, these may be the world’s oldest extant rhyming poems.
Shijing Ode #4: “JIU MU”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
EPIGRAMS VI
These epigrams include my modern English translations of Galileo, Confucius, Gandhi, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Rene Descartes, Jorge Luis Borges and Euripides.
Cutting Wood
How to cut wood?
It’s hard without an axe.
How to find a wife?
It’s hard without a go-between.
Cutting wood… cutting wood…
The rule’s pretty clear:
To find a girl
You need a lot of gifts.
Translated from an anonymous poem in the Shijing, a classic Chinese poetry anthology written around the 7th-11th centuries BC.
