22 Pr e - q i n t i m e s
for their partners, as does the young man who is the persona in “Jing nü” (The Re-
tiring Girl [Mao no. 42]):C 1. 6
The Retiring Girl 靜女 ( jìng nǚ)The retiring girl, lovely 靜女其姝 ( jìng nǚ qí shū)
2 Was to wait for me at this corner of the wall. 俟我於城隅 (sì wŏ yú chéng yú)
But she hides and will not show herself 愛而不見 (ài ěr bú jiàn)
4 As I scratch my head, pace up and down. 搔首踟躕 (sāo shŏu chí chú)The retiring girl, fine, 靜女其孌 ( jìng nǚ qí luán)
6 Gave me a vermilion stalk. 貽我彤管 (yí wŏ tóng guăn)
The vermilion stalk is so red 彤管有煒 (tóng guăn yŏu wěi)
8 I delight, am cheered by the girl’s beauty. 說懌女美 (yuè yì rŭ měi)From the pastures she brought me a reed sprout, 自牧歸荑 (zì mù guī tí)
10 Truly beautiful and remarkable. 洵美且異 (xún měi qiě yì)
“It is not that you, sprout, are beautiful— 匪女之為美 ( f ěi rŭ zhī wéi měi)
12 A beautiful girl made you my gift.” 美人之貽 (měi rén zhī yí)
[MSZJ 2.15b–16b]“The Retiring Girl” is a poem that shows us only a few minutes of a relationship
in real time, but it suggests much more. The first stanza provides an exposition
of sorts: we hear of the two characters, their relationship (at least to some degree),
and their location, and we are allowed to wait with the young man for the girl to
show herself. With him, we look toward the corner of the wall, where he seems
to know she is (since he seems certain that she is hiding there). She is reticent to
meet him, even in this out-of-the-way place (the corner of the city wall). Of course,
she is depicted as a “retiring” or “quiet girl,” but the third stanza suggests they
may already be lovers and her hiding may be simply playful. The final line of the
first stanza, “As I scratch my head, pace up and down,” slows the action (three of
the first four lines rhyme [aaxa] enhancing this stasis) and serves as a background
for the persona’s musings that follow in the second and third stanzas. The reader
joins the young man in looking inward. Without the quiet girl present, the man’s
thoughts wander back, in the second stanza, to the last time he has seen her. He
examines a bright-red stalk that the girl had given him then. The vivid color of
this natural object in his hand symbolizes the girl’s loveliness and begins to bring
her alive for the reader as well. The changed rhymed scheme in this stanza (bbcc)
underlines the parallel between gift and girl.
In the third stanza, the persona flashes back to another gift—a reed sprout that
his love brought him from the pasture, perhaps the site of a previous rendezvous.
At this point, the reader is well prepared for a second comparison of the love token
to the lover. This time the token is a small reed sprout. The mundane nature of
this token—not even brightly colored—makes it clear that the repeated use of the