fine. Your friends[1], assisting in the service, Have done their part with reverent demeanour.
'Your reverent demeanour was altogether what the occasion required; And also that of your filial son[2]. For such filial piety, continued without ceasing, There will ever be conferred blessings upon you.'
What will the blessings be? 'That along the passages of your palace, You shall move for ten thousand years, And there will be granted to you for ever dignity and posterity.'
How as to your posterity? 'Heaven invests you with your dignity; Yea, for ten thousand years, The bright appointment is attached (to your line).'
How is it attached? 'There is given you a heroic wife. There is given you a heroic wife, And from her shall come the (line of) descendants.'
Ode 4. The Hû Î.
An ode appropriate to the feast given to the personators of the departed, on the day after the sacrifice in the ancestral temple.
This supplementary sacrifice on the day after the principal service in the temple appeared in the ninth Book of the fourth Part of the Shû; and of the feast after it to the personators of the dead I have spoken on p. 301.
The wild-ducks and widgeons are on the King[3];
- ↑ That is, the guests, visitors, and officers of the court.
- ↑ Towards the end of the sacrificial service, the eldest son of the king joined in pledging the representatives of their ancestors.
- ↑ The King is an affluent of the Wei, not far from Wû's capital of Hâo. The birds, feeling at home in its waters, on its sands, &c., serve to introduce the parties feasted, in a situation where they might relax from the gravity of the preceding day, and be happy.
