Lǐ Sòng 李頌
Ode to the Plum Tree (modern editorial title; lǐ 李 = plum tree; sòng 頌 = ode / hymn of praise)
(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)
About the work
Lǐ Sòng 李頌 is one of the texts in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 8, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2011, comprising approximately 6 bamboo strips in 4 stanzas. The text is a rhyming ode — the only literary ode (sòng 頌) in the entire Shanghai Museum corpus — praising the plum tree (lǐ 李) by contrast with the parasol tree (tóng 桐), in a style reminiscent of the Shī 詩 tradition. The poem uses tree imagery to encode an implicit commentary on human virtue and social distinction, a technique characteristic of the xìng 興 (analogical evocation) mode of the Guófēng 國風 odes.
Abstract
Stanza 1: The parasol tree and the plum. “Intertwining, ah, official tree (guān shù 官樹), the paulownia/parasol (tóng 桐) — how pleasant! Cut [to show the] outer [rings], sparse on the inside; [it is] the foremost of the myriad trees (zhòng mù zhī jì 眾木之紀). Who [endures] winter’s bitter cold — its leaves (yè) just falling? The phoenix (fèng niǎo 鳳鳥) alights on it, waiting for its time to sing.”
Stanza 2: The solitary plum. “This tree growing alone between bramble and thornwood (zhēn jí 榛棘), urgently planted, quickly growing — so thick it has not yet returned [to where it started]; deeply open [in its fruit?] — its beans and roots, lofty and unwavering; its disordered trunk and layered branches, [already] somewhat ruined…”
Stanza 3: Contrast and moral address. “Alas, alas, gentleman (jūnzǐ 君子) — observe the appearance of the trees! Are they not born together (jiē shēng 偕生), yet not the same? [I] tell the flock of birds — be reverential and do not alight on it! The plain white-flowered house (sù fǔ gōng 素府宮 — perhaps “the commoner’s plum tree at home”) — [its] wood is of a different category.”
Stanza 4: Aspiration and constancy. “I wish that the year’s beginning [spring] would come early — longing for the tree to flower (shù xiù 樹秀)! Rich flowers and doubled light — what the people love. Guarding things firmly, strong in the trunk — the tree [is] single-hearted; departing from other trees, it does not follow the wind.”
Genre and literary significance. Lǐ Sòng stands out in the Shanghai Museum corpus as a lyric poem rather than a philosophical or narrative prose text. Its stanzaic rhyming structure, use of xìng 興-mode imagery (trees as analogues for human virtues), and vocabulary of jūnzǐ 君子 moral exhortation all place it firmly within the Shī 詩 tradition. The contrast between the official/parasol tree (tall, prominent, visited by phoenixes) and the solitary plum tree (growing among thorns, humble, steadfast) suggests an allegory of social origin versus intrinsic virtue — the plum’s “single-heartedness” and resistance to wind encoding the ideal of moral constancy regardless of birth or rank. The text provides rare evidence of sòng 頌-genre poetry in the pre-Hàn manuscript tradition outside the received Odes canon.
Translations and research
- 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 8, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2011 — editio princeps.
- Kern, Martin. “Early Chinese Literature, Beginnings through Western Han.” In The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 1. CUP, 2010 — contextual framework for the pre-Hàn poetic tradition.
- Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006 — discussion of the Shī-style poetic tradition in manuscript context.
Links
- Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts