From foot to summit it is entirely covered in what could be either cypress or cedar, whose blue-black mass is striped and stippled with the pale pink of swaths of blossoming wild cherry. The distance is so hazy that al appears as a single wash of blurred shapes and colors. A little nearer, a single bald mountain rises above the others, lowering over me. Its naked flanks might have been slashed by the ax of some giant; they plunge with a ferocious steepness to bury themselves in the val ey floor below. That solitary tree standing on the summit would be a red pine. The very sky between its branches is sharply defined. A few hundred yards ahead of me the path disappears, but the sight of a red-cloaked figure moving along in my direction far above suggests that a farther climb wil bring me to that spot. The path is appal ingly bad.
Of course the soil itself could quite easily be leveled; the trouble is that large rocks are embedded in it. Even were you to smooth the soil, there is no smoothing away these rocks, and even if the rocks were broken up, there would be no way to deal with the larger ones. They tower with serene indifference out of the broken earth of the track, innocent of any impulse to make way for the walker. Since they pay one no heed, therea€™s nothing for it but to climb over them or go around them. And even where there is no rock, the walking is far from easy. The sides of the path rise steeply, while the center forms a deep depression; you could describe the six-foot width as gouged into a triangular shape whose deep apex lies down the middle of the path. Making onea€™s way along it is more like fording a riverbed than walking a path. But it was never my intention to make this journey in haste, so I set off up the winding track, taking my time.
Suddenly a skylark bursts into song, directly beneath my feet. I gaze down into the val ey but can see no sign of the creature. Only its voice rings out. The rapid notes pour busily forth, without pause. Ita€™s as if the whole boundless air were being tormented by the thousand tiny bites of a swarm of fleas. Not for an instant does the birda€™s outpouring of song falter; it seems it must sing this soft spring day right to its close, sing it into light and then sing it into darkness again. Up and up the skylark climbs, on and ona€”it wil surely find its death deep in that sky. On and up it climbs, slipping at last into the clouds, and there perhaps its floating form dissolves, so that final y only that voice is left hanging in the far reaches of the heavens.
I turn a sharp rocky corner, then execute a swift, perilous swerve to the right to avoid a sudden drop into which a blind man would have tumbled headlong. Looking down, I see far below a vast yel ow swath of wild mustard in flower. Perhaps, I think, this is the place that skylark would fal to in alightinga€”or no, perhaps it would instead soar upward out of that golden field. Then I imagine the tumbling skylark crossing paths with another as it rises. My final thought is that, whether fal ing or rising or crossing midair, the wild, vigorous song of the skylark would never for an instant cease.
Spring makes one drowsy. The cat forgets to chase the mouse; humans forget that they owe money. At times the presence of the soul itself is forgotten, and one sinks into a deep daze. But when I behold that distant field of mustard blossom, my eyes spring awake. When I hear the skylarka€™s voice, my soul grows clear and vivid within me. It is with its whole soul that the skylark sings, not merely with its throat. Surely therea€™s no expression of the soula€™s motion in voice more vivacious and spirited than this. Ah, joy! And to think these thoughts, to taste this joya€”this is poetry.
Shel eya€™s poem about the skylark immediately leaps to my mind. I try reciting it to myself, but I can remember only two or three verses. One of them goes
We look before and after
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tel of saddest
thought.
Yes indeed, no matter how joyful the poet may be, he cannot hope to sing his joy as the skylark does, with such passionate wholeheartedness, oblivious to al thought of before and after. In Chinese poetry one often finds suffering expressed as, for instance, a€?a hundredweight of sorrows,a€ and similar expressions can be seen in Western poetry too of course, but for the non-poet, the poeta€™s hundredweight may wel be a mere dram or so. It strikes me now that poets are great sufferers; they seem to have more than double the nervous sensitivity of the average person. They may experience exceptional joys, but their sorrows too are boundless. This being the case, ita€™s worth thinking twice before you become a poet.
The path continues level for a while, with the broadleaf forest on the mountainside to my right, and down to the left the endless fields of mustard blossom. My feet occasional y tread down a dandelion as I walk. Its sawtoothed leaves spread themselves expansively in al directions, and at its center it nurses a nest of golden bal s. I turn to look back, regretful at having inadvertently trodden on it while my attention was held by the mustard blossom. But those golden bal s are sitting there just as before, stil enshrined in their sawtoothed circle. What insouciant creatures they are! I return to my thoughts.
Sorrows may be the poeta€™s unavoidable dark companion, but the spirit with which he listens to the skylarka€™s song holds not one jot of suffering. At the sight of the mustard blossoms too, the heart simply dances with delight. Likewise with dandelions, or cherry blossomsa€”but now I suddenly realize that in fact the cherries have disappeared from sight. Yes, here among these mountains, in immediate contact with the phenomena of the natural world, everything I see and hear is intriguing for me. No special suffering can arise from simply being beguiled like thisa€”at worst, surely, it is tired legs and the fact that I cana€™t eat fine food.
But why is there no suffering here? Simply because I see this scenery as a picture; I read it as a set of poems. Seeing it thus, as painting or poetry, I have no desire to acquire the land and cultivate it, or to put a railway through it and make a profit. This scenerya€”scenery that adds nothing to the bel y or the pocketa€”fil s the heart with pleasure simply as scenery, and this is surely why there is neither suffering nor anxiety in the experience. This is why the power of nature is precious to us. Nature instantly forges the spirit to a pristine purity and elevates it to the realm of pure poetry.
Love may be beautiful, filial piety may be a splendid thing, loyalty and patriotism may al be very fine. But when you yourself are in one of these positions, you find yourself sucked into the maelstrom of the situationa€™s complex pros and consa€”blind to any beauty or fineness, you cannot perceive where the poetry of the situation may lie.
To grasp this, you must put yourself in the disinterested position of an outside observer, who has the leisurely perspective to be able to comprehend it. A play is interesting, a novel is appealing, precisely because you are a third-person observer of the drama. The person whose interest is engaged by a play or novel has left self-interest temporarily behind. For the space of time that he reads or watches, he is himself a poet.
And yet therea€™s no escaping human feelings in the usual play or novel. The players suffer, rage, flail about, and weep, and the observer wil find himself identifying with the experience, and suffering, raging, flailing, and weeping with them. The value of the experience may lie in the fact that there is nothing here of greedy self-interest, but unfortunately the other sentiments are more than commonly activated. Therein lies my problem with it.
