-
De libro CHI-KING sic censeo
- wrote the young MANCHU, CHUN TCHI,
- less a work of the mind than of affects
- brought forth from the inner nature
- here sung in these odes.
- Urbanity in externals, virtu in internals
- some in a high style for the rites
- some in humble;
- for Emperors; for the people
- all things are here brought to precisions
- that we shd/ learn our integrity
- that we shd/ attain our integrity
- Ut animum nostrum purget, Confucius ait, dirigatque
- ad lumen rationis
- perpetuale effecto/
- That this book keep us in due bounds of office
- the norm
- show what we shd/ take into action;
- what follow within and persistently
- CHI KING ostendit incitatque. Vir autem rectus
- et libidinis expers ita domine servat
- with faith, never tricky, obsequatur parentis
- nunquam deflectat
- all order comes into such norms
- igitur meis encomiis, therefor this preface
- CHUN TCHI anno undecesimo
- (a.d. 1655)
- periplum, not as land looks on a map
- but as sea bord seen by men sailing.
- Now tarters in the murk night
- sent great numbers of sojers with lanthorns
- which they held up very high
- and thus spread light on proceedings
- causing great fear in Nanking.
- so the last mingsters fled out by the Tchinkiang road.
- And the ammiral put to sea thinking perhaps that
- a few minutes more resistance
- wd/ be of no mortal use.
- And on the tenth came an officer
- to say that the port was in tartar hands
- But MiLord the Prince and his eating companions
- were in no shape to take in the message
- They weren’t sober till the following midnight
- whereon they skedaddled
- And the Nankings set up a new emperor
- And the order to off pigtails stiffened resistance
- put new guts into mingsters
- Kouei born to ill fortune
- no mingster cd/ trust any other; cd/ agree with any six others
- utilité publique, motif trop élevé
- for vile courtiers
- and when the young MANCHU was 14 they gave him to wife a mogul
- and took in Galileo’s astronomy,
- chucked the mohametan
- And there came a hong-mao or red-headed Dutchman
- And the portagoose to Macao
- and they say that the Emperor CHUN TCHI
- died of sorrow, for the death of one of his queens
- an officer’s wife who had risen.
- And the four regents put eunuchs out of high office
- a thousand purged out of palace
- and a half ton block of iron inscribed
- Let there be no Eunuch in office hereafter.
- And in ’64 they putt out the Xtians
- Portageese were confined to Macao
- Thus KANG HI
- who played the spinet on Johnnie Bach’s birthday
- do not exaggerate/ he at least played on some such instrument
- and learned to pick out several tunes (european)
- and were demarked the borders of Russia
- with a portagoose and a frog priest to interpret
- to whom each a robe brocaded with dragons
- but not embroidered
- and short coats of martin, satin lining, gold buttons
- Pereira and Gerbillon
- made mandarins second order
- And that embassy went out via Mt Paucity
- and paid visit to the ho fo, the lama who dies not
- as he sat on a pair of great cushions
- one brocade and the other plain yellow
- who blessed them with tea and a luncheon
- and in another room assez mal propre
- singing his prayers was another
- and in yet another temple apartment another said frankly
- he didn’t see how he cd/ have lived in another body
- before this and in any case had no such remembrance
- but only the ho fo’s word
- and they went on toward the Hans of Kalkas
- where they got order to turn about and come home
- was a war on between Eleutes and Kalkas
- and to tell the Oros (the O Rossians) to meet ’em at Selinga
- or some other place on the frontier
- to determine frontiers.
- which they accomplished next year at Nipchou.
- With these ambassadors were a lot of domestics
- five thousand 800 sojers
- and a spot of artillery
- who all passed the gt wall at Cha houkoen.
- And KANG walked to his grandmother’s funeral
- a distance of 500 ly from the capital.
- And this embassy was concerning the Amur frontier
- coming from Petersburg
- but we wanted our martin sables, our huntin’
- that was on the north side of the Amur
- where are mountains and great lakes in the valleys.
- Year 28th of KANG HI, under the 7th moon
- was this treaty in latin with copies in tartar and muscovite
- and the chinks swore by the god of Xtians
- thinking nothing else wd/ have more force with the muscovites
- ‘To spare further bloodshed on our frontiers
- we here near the town of Nipchou
- swear peace solid, eternal
- state that boundary stones shall be set.
- Pray we to the GOD of all things
- who seeth our hearts
- that if any man here have reservation
- or plot his own profit
- in violence to this treaty
- he die before he reach a ripe age
- So the envoys
- embraced to the music of instruments
- and the rhoosians (Orosians) served a sort of lunch
- to the chinese ambassadors
- confitures and three sorts of wine
- vintage of europe
- and this was due to the frog and the portagoose
- Gerbillon and Pereira
- to Gerbillon in the most critical moment
- that he kept their tempers till they came to conclusion.
|
|