“_If you will love me dear, my lord, I’ll pick up my skirts and cross the ford, But if from your heart you turn me out ... Well, you’re not the only man about, You silly, silly, silliest lout!_”-- still commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward words express the wish of the people of a certain small State that some great State would intervene and put an end to an existing feud in the ruling family. Native scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the traditions of commentators, but European students will do well to seek the meaning of the Odes within the compass of the Odes themselves. Possibly the very introduction of these absurdities may have helped to preserve to our day a work which would otherwise have been considered too trivial to merit the attention of scholars. Chinese who are in the front rank of scholarship know it by heart, and each separate piece has been searchingly examined, until the force of exegesis can no farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to the accepted commentary, “The muddiness of the Ching river appears from the (clearness of the) Wei river.” In 1790 the Emperor Ch‘ien Lung, dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine the rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the Wei muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean “The Ching river is made muddy by the Wei river.” The following is a specimen of one of the longer of the Odes, saddled, like all the rest, with an impossible political interpretation, of which nothing more need be said:-- “_You seemed a guileless youth enough, Offering for silk your woven stuff;[1] But silk was not required by you; I was the silk you had in view. With you I crossed the ford, and while We wandered on for many a mile I said, ‘I do not wish delay, But friends must fix our wedding-day ... Oh, do not let my words give pain, But with the autumn come again.’_ “_And then I used to watch and wait To see you passing through the gate; And sometimes, when I watched in vain, My tears would flow like falling rain; But when I saw my darling boy, I laughed and cried aloud for joy. The fortune-tellers, you declared, Had all pronounced us duly paired; ‘Then bring a carriage,’ I replied, ‘And I’ll away to be your bride.’_ “_The mulberry-leaf, not yet undone By autumn chill, shines in the sun. O tender dove, I would advise, Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes! O maiden fair, not yet a spouse, List lightly not to lovers’ vows! A man may do this wrong, and time Will fling its shadow o’er his crime; A woman who has lost her name Is doomed to everlasting shame._