A Dream of T’ien-Mu Mountain

(Part of a Poem in Irregular Metre.)

On through the night I flew, high over the Mirror Lake. The lake-moon

cast my shadow on the waves and travelled with me to the stream of

Shan. The Lord Hsieh’s lodging-place was still there. The blue

waters rippled; the cry of the apes was shrill. I shod my feet with

the shoes of the Lord Hsieh and “climbed to Heaven on a ladder of dark

clouds.” Half-way up, I saw the unrisen sun hiding behind the sea

and heard the Cock of Heaven crowing in the sky. By a thousand broken

paths I twisted and turned from crag to crag. My eyes grew dim. I

clutched at the rocks, and all was dark.

Hsieh Ling-yün (circa A.D. 400) was a famous mountain-climber

who invented special mountain-climbing shoes.

A quotation from one of Hsieh’s poems.

The roaring of bears and the singing of dragons echoed amid the stones

and streams. The darkness of deep woods made me afraid. I trembled at

the storied cliffs.

The clouds hung dark, as though they would rain; the air was dim with

the spray of rushing waters.

Lightning flashed: thunder roared. Peaks and ridges tottered and broke.

Suddenly the walls of the hollow where I stood sundered with a crash,

and I looked down on a bottomless void of blue, where the sun and moon

gleamed on a terrace of silver and gold.

A host of Beings descended--Cloud-spirits, whose coats were made of

rainbow and the horses they rode on were the winds.