hich was brought together and edited by Confucius, 551-479
B.C., and is now included among the Sacred Books, forming as it does an
important portion of the Confucian Canon. These Odes, once over three
thousand in number, were reduced by Confucius to three hundred and
eleven; hence they are frequently spoken of as "the Three Hundred." They
treat of war and love, of eating and drinking and dancing, of the
virtues and vices of rulers, and of the misery and happiness of the
people. They are in rhyme. Rhyme is essential to Chinese poetry; there
is no such thing as blank verse. Further, the rhymes of the Odes have
always been, and are still, the only recognized rhymes which can be used
by a Chinese poet, anything else being regarded as mere jingle. Poetical
licence, however, is tolerated; and great masters have availed
themselves freely of its aid. One curious result of this is that whereas
in many instances two given words may have rhymed, as no doubt they did,
in the speech of three thousand years ago, they no longer rhyme to the
ear in the colloquial of to-day, although still accepted as true and
proper rhymes in the composition of verse.

It is noticeable at once that the Odes are mostly written in lines of
four words, examples of lines consisting of any length from a single
word to eight, though such do exist, being comparatively rare. These
lines of four words, generally recognized as the oldest measure in
Chinese poetry, are frequently grouped as quatrains, in which the
first, second and fourth lines rhyme; but very often only the second
and fourth lines rhyme, and sometimes there are groups of a larger
number of lines in which occasional lines are found without any rhyme
at all. A few stray pieces, as old as many of those found among the
Odes, have been handed down and preserved, in which the metre consists
of two lines of three words followed by one line of seven words. These
three lines all rhyme, but the rhyme changes with each succeeding
triplet. It would be difficult to persuade the English reader that
this is a very effective measure, and one in which many a gloomy or
pathetic tale has been told. In order to realise how a few Chinese
monosyllables in juxtaposition can stir the human heart to its lowest
depths, it is necessary to devote some years to the study of the
language.

At the close of the 4th century B.C., a dithyrambic measure, irregular
and wild, was introduced