《人间词话》英译（一百二十一）

（周清真）先生于诗文无所不工，然尚未尽脱古人蹊径。平生著述，自乐府为第一。词人甲乙，宋人早有定论。惟张叔夏病其意趣不高远。然北宋人如欧、苏、秦、黄，高则高矣，至精工博大，殊不逮先生。故以宋词比唐诗，则东坡似太白，欧、秦似摩诘，耆卿似乐天，方回、叔原则大历十才子之流。南宋惟一稼轩可比昌黎。而词中老杜，则非先生不可。昔人以耆卿比少陵，犹为未当也。<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Chou Pang-yen was skilled in every phase of poetry and prose, yet he was not able completely to break away from the well-worn paths of the ancients. Of all his writings, he himself placed his yueh-fu at the top. That he was a tz’u writer of the first rank was established as early as the Sung dynasty. Only Chang Yen felt he showed a weakness in that his meaning and interest (yi-ch’u) were not sufficiently lofty and far-reaching. However, though Northern Sung writers such as Ouyang Hsiu, Su Shih, Ch’in Kuan, and Huang T’ing-chien may have expressed lofty enough sentiments, none of them could touch Chou when it came to the wide range of his expert skill. Therefore, if we were to make a comparative classification of Sung tz’u and T’ang shih, Su Shih would compare with Li Po, Ouyang Hsiu and Ch’in Kuan would compare with Wang Wei; Liu Yung would compare with Po Chu-yi, while Ho Chu and Yen Chi-tao would be in a class with the ten poets of the Ta-li period (766-80). In the Southern Sung only the one poet, Hsin Ch’i-chi, could be compared with Han Yu. And the only one among tz’u writers to compare with Tu Fu is Chou Pang-yen. It was not at all appropriate for in former times to equate Liu Yuang with Tu Fu.