Analysis on "The Book of Songs"

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Analysis of The Book of Songs
The Book of Songs is the first poetic anthology of China, entailing 305 works that trace back to the 7th century BC. It is one of the "Five Classics" studied and memorized by Chinese scholars and is traditionally believed to have been compiled by Confucius out of a pool of 3,000 works. The Book of Songs is widely acknowledged for its ability to capture the human condition of the people who lived in the Yellow River plain (the poems were drawn from the provinces and cities that encompassed the Chou territory). The poems contain the human condition of emotion and thought, from the parting songs of lovers to farmers complaining of corrupt officials to soldiers lamenting the weary campaigns that kept them away from their families. This essay will analyze selected poems from The Book of Songs with the hope of appreciating their simplicity and evocative power of the basic human emotions and challenges. The thesis of this essay is: The poems contained in The Book of Songs illustrated the human condition of both emotions and thought.
"The Ospreys Cry" is one of the most discussed poems in The Book of Songs and the subject of countless allusions in Chinese tradition. On the surface, the poem is a love poem describing the efforts of a man of the royal family to win the heart of a fair girl he is infatuated with. The first two sentences of each verse describe a natural image that is contrasted with the following two sentences that describe the courtship around which the poem revolves: "Fair, fair," cry the ospreys/On the island in the river./Lovely is this noble lady,/Fit bride for our Lord./In patches grows the water mallow;/To left and right one must seek it./Shy was this noble lady;/Day and night he sought her" (Waley 33). This formula is repeated throughout the poem in a continuous narrative. Vividly, the poet (in the first and third-person narrative) describes the male suitor longing for the lovely lady, the lack of success in finding her, and the suitor's imagination of fulfilling the desires. The poem includes imageries of the rural setting in which the poem is situated, which impart context, feelings, and atmosphere into the poem.
On the other hand, the poem "Cocklebur" tells the anguish of a woman who is thinking about his husband, who has traveled a long distance off on state business. The first stanza of the poem captures the human condition of the forlorn wife who is so anxious that she cannot go about her daily activities: "Thick grows the cocklebur;/But even a shallow basket I did not fill./Sighing for the man I love/I laid it there on the road" (7). The stanzas that follow capture the weariness of the absent husband who matches his wife's sadness with his sorrow: "I am climbing that rocky hill,/My horses stagger,/And I stop for a little to drink from that bronze ewer/To still my heart's yearning" (7). The following stanzas continue in the same vein and capture the husband's grief at being kept away from his wife.
On the other hand, the poem "Peach Tree" tells the human condition of a young maiden who is maturing into a bride and starting a new chapter in her life: "Buxom is the peach-tree;/How its flowers blaze!/Our lady going home/Brings good to family and...