FULNESS AND DECAY.[1]
Alas for the fulness and decay of human greatness! Though these are called the appointments of Heaven, truly they are the handiwork of man. The rise and fall of Chuan Tsung may be cited as an instance in point.
When the Prince of Chin lay on his death-bed, he took three arrows and handed them to his son, saying, “The Liangs are my foes. The Prince of Yen treats me with ingratitude. The K‘i-tan Tartar swore to me as a brother, and then passed over to the Liangs. These three grievances I leave as a legacy of hate to thee. Take these three arrows, and fail not to bear in mind thy father’s wishes.
Chuang Tsung accordingly took the arrows and deposited them in a shrine; and by-and-by, when war was declared, he despatched an attendant to sacrifice a goat at the temple and bring out the arrows. He then placed them in an embroidered quiver, and bearing them on his back proceeded to the field of battle.
He returned triumphant, and ascended the Imperial throne. He had captured the Prince of Yen and his son. He had got with him in a box the heads of the ruler and prime minister of the House of Liang. He went to the shrine to replace the arrows and communicate to the spirit of his dead father that the work which had been entrusted to him was accomplished. Was not this, then, the supreme fulness of glorious achievement?
Vengeance had thus been wreaked, and the empire was his, when suddenly there was a cry in the night,―a rush to arms,―hasty flight,―defection of soldiery,―sovereign and minister blankly gazing in each other’s faces,―monastic vows and shaven crowns,―robes drenched with tears,―oh, what a fall was there! So hard to win: so easy to lose. Surely these were issues that lay in the hand of man.
- ↑ “By the law of Nature, too, all manners of Ideals have their fatal limits and lot; their appointed periods of youth, of maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and disappearance.”―Carlyle’s Past and Present.
