t e t ra s y l l a biC Sh i P oe t ry : The B o ok of P oeT ry 25
C 1. 8
Little Stars 小星 (xiăo xīng)Faint are those little stars, 嘒彼小星 (huì bĭ xiăo xīng)
2 Three and five of them in the east. 三五在東 (sān wŭ zài dōng)
Hurriedly mid the night we go, 肅肅宵征 (sù sù xiāo zhēng)
4 In morning and at night we are in the palace— 夙夜在公 (sù yè zài gōng)
Really people’s lots are not the same! 寔命不同 (shí mìng bù tóng)
6 Faint are those little stars, 嘒彼小星 (huì bĭ xiăo xīng)
Of Orion and the Pleiades. 維參與昴 (wéi shēn yŭ măo)
8 Hurriedly mid the night we go, 肅肅宵征 (sù sù xiāo zhēng)
Carrying our coverlets and sheets— 抱衾與裯 (bào qīn yŭ chóu)
10 Really people’s lots are not similar! 寔命不猶 (shí mìng bù yóu)
[MSZJ 1.16a–b]
The xing (affective image) that opens this poem is also a bi (comparison), linking
the stars to lower-ranking palace women. In the growing light of dawn—which
may symbolize the waking of the ruler’s favorite—these three and five “stars” grow
ever fainter. Why not three or four stars? The answer is that these three and five
stars are those in ancient Chinese constellations comparable with our Orion and
the Pleiades, the stars that remain visible the longest in the winter’s morning sky.
This unusual trope allows the first stanza to link to the second, where the meta-
phor becomes clearer. The theme of this song is similar to the meaning of the
ancient Chinese saying “The hungry sing of their food, the labored sing of their
service.” The persona here laments her lower status, which makes it impossible
for her to attend her lord for the entire night, as the main wife would. Thus she
and her fellow court ladies hurry about. The image of these women with the cover-
lets and sheets draped on their shoulders suggests both the canopy of the sky (in
the appearance of the women) and the hierarchy of the palace women themselves
(seen in their hardship). The prosody of this poem is regular except for the “extra”
fifth line in each stanza, perhaps lending emphasis to the plaint of the final lines,
an emphasis heightened by the rhyme scheme ababb, acacc.
There is a second, relatively common reading of this poem that identifies the
persona as a low-ranking courtier (a member of the shi, or petit nobility) who scur-
ries to be on time for the dawn audience, his own star obscured by the higher-
ranking grandees of the court. Indeed, many traditional poems have been inter-
preted variously as political or love songs. Yet the coverlets and sheets argue of love
here, and the entire poem bears some resemblance to Sappho’s (late seventh–early
sixth century b.C.e.) fragment no. 34:6
Stars around the lovely moon
Hide their gleaming beauty away
Whenever she at the full sheds
Over the earth her radiant glow.