“Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality.”

Admiring a poetic tradition grounded closely in observed experience · Essay, Poetry and Culture, introduction to The Jade Mountain (1929)

• Poetry
• Truth

“I had come to feel that poetic literature must contain streams from one or the other of these two sources: the Greek and the Hebrew.”

Reflecting on the Western literary inheritance he received in his education · Essay, Poetry and Culture, introduction to The Jade Mountain (1929)

• Art
• Poetry

“Chinese poems reflect this deep devotion of their authors to the good of the State—their unwavering allegiance to righteousness, even when it meant demotion or exile or death.”

Admiring poets whose public conscience carried genuine personal consequences · Essay, Poetry and Culture, introduction to The Jade Mountain (1929)

• Death
• Poetry
• Truth