Classic Poem

Flashing light, this ancient mirror,
twin dragons writhe thereon.
Tradition says it once belonged
to the palace at Hsien-yang.
This bright moon of Ch'in times
still survives today:
scrape away the muddy sand —
its luster shines again.
In those years, when Ch'in engulfed
all six of China's states,
to inner palace were consigned a thousand lovely eyes!
Gecko-juice smeared on their limbs,
inner organs mirrored:
yet through his reign of thirty-six years
the emperor knew them not.

Then the envoy on Hua-yin road met the Mountain God;
the imperial carriage traveled east
when the ancestral dragon died.
The beautiful women, bells and drums
all scattered like the mist,
and this mirror, desolate,
passed through the market place.
Remember when the emperor
requisitioned all weapons in the land,
and twelve images of giant men
were then cast from the bronze!
He must have used the excess metal
to make this mirror and case;
the God of Oneness peered down from heaven,
dragons were amazed!
Then Lius came forth as Yings died out —
how rapidly they fell:
the golden lessons of a thousand autumns
weighed feather-light to them.
Mirror of Ch'in, in vain they boast
you coldly image gall:
you do not show the many bones
of dead men at Great Wall!