蔽芾甘棠、勿翦勿伐、召伯所茇。

蔽芾甘棠、勿翦勿敗、召伯所憩。

蔽芾甘棠、勿翦勿拜、召伯所說。

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree; -- Clip it not, hew it not down.  Under it the chief of Zhou lodged.

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree; -- Clip it not, break not a twig of it.  Under it the chief of Zhou rested.

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree; -- Clip it not, bend not a twig of it.  Under it the chief of Zhou halted.

Ode.5. Narrative. The love of the people for the memory of the duke of Shaou mkaes them love the trees beneath which he had rested.

召伯 might be translated 'Shaou the chief;' -- see note on the title of the Book. The nobleman is called pih, not as lord or duke of Shaou, but as invested with jurisdiction over all the State of the west. In the exercise of that, he had won the hearts of the people, and his memory was somehow connected with the tree which the poet had before his mind's eye, who makes the people therefore, as Tso-she says (XI. ix. under p.1), 'think of the man and love the tree.' Stories are related by Han Ying and Lëw Heang of the way in which the chief executed his functions in the open air; but they owed their origin probably to the ode. We do not need them to enable us to enter into its spirit.

The kan-t'ang is, no doubt, a species of pear-tree. Maou identifies it with the too (杜), after the Urh-ya; others distinguish between them, saying that the fruit of the t'ang was whitish and sweet, while that of the too is red and sour. Maou makes 蔽芾 = 'small-like;' much better seems to be Choo's view of the phrase, which I have followed. 伐 = 擊, 'to strike' the tree, 'hew it down;' 敗, acc to Choo, = 折, 'to break it;' and 拜 = 屈, 'to bend it,' -- as the body is bent in bowing. The tree becomes dearer, the more the poet keeps it before him. The concluding characters of the stanzas have nearly the same meaning. 茇 is explained by 草舍, 'to halt among the grass;' 說 (read shwuy; al. 稅), simply by 舍, 'to halt,' 'to lodge;' and 憩, (al. 愒), by 息, 'to rest.'

The rhymes are -- in st.1, 伐, 茇; 敗, 憩; in 3, 拜, 說.