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Shi Jing Introduction Table of content – The Book of Odes

The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, more than three hundred songs, odes and hymns. Tr. Legge (en) and Granet (fr, incomplete).

Section III — Greater odes of the kingdom
1 2 3
Chapter 1 — Decade of Wen Wang

235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244

Shijing III. 1. (243)

Successors tread in the steps [of their predecessors] in our Zhou.
For generations there had been wise kings ;
The three sovereigns were in heaven ;
And king [Wu] was their worthy successor in his capital.

King [Wu] was their worthy successor in his capital,
Rousing himself to seek for the hereditary virtue,
Always striving to accord with the will [of Heaven] ;
And thus he secured the confidence due to a king.

He secured the confidence due to a king,
And became a pattern of all below him.
Ever thinking how to be filial,
His filial mind was the model [which he supplied].

Men loved him, the One man,
And responded [to his example] with a docile virtue.
Ever thinking how to be filial,
He brilliantly continued the doings [of his fathers].

Brilliantly ! and his posterity,
Continuing to walk in the steps of their forefathers,
For myriads of years,
Will receive the blessing of Heaven.

They will receive the blessing of Heaven.
And from the four quarters [of the kingdom] will felicitations come to them.
For myriads of years,
Will there not be their helpers ?

Legge 243

Shi Jing III. 1. (243) IntroductionTable of content
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Alias Shijing, Shi Jing, Book of Odes, Book of Songs, Classic of Odes, Classic of Poetry, Livre des Odes, Canon des Poèmes.

The Book of Odes, The Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Three-characters book, The Book of Changes, The Way and its Power, 300 Tang Poems, The Art of War, Thirty-Six Strategies
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