Sacred Books of the East/Volume 3/The Shih/Odes of the Temple and the Altar/The Sacrificial Odes of Kâu/Decade 2/Ode 8
Ode 8. The Zâi Hsien.
Appropriate to an occasion when the feudal princes had been assisting king Khăng at a sacrifice to his father.
They appeared before their sovereign king,
To seek from him the rules (they were to observe).
With their dragon-emblazoned banners, flying bright,
The bells on them and their front-boards tinkling,
And with the rings on the ends of the reins glittering,
Admirable was their majesty and splendour.
He led them to appear before his father shrined on the left[1],
Where he discharged his filial duty, and presented his offerings;—
That
he might have granted to him long life,
And ever preserve (his dignity).
Great and many are his blessings.
They are the brilliant and accomplished princes,
Who cheer him with his many sources of happiness,
Enabling him to perpetuate them in their brightness as pure blessing.
- ↑ Among the uses of the services of the ancestral temple, specified by Confucius and quoted on p. 302, was the distinguishing the order of descent in the royal House. According to the rules for that purpose, the characters here used enable us to determine the subject of this line as king Wû, in opposition to his father Wăn.