VI. Ch‘ien

The Ch‘ien; narrative. Sung in the first month of winter, and in spring, when the king presented a fish in the ancestral temple.

In Ch‘i and Chü, those streams of I,
About the warrens fish abound.
Large swarms of various kinds we see.
The mudfish and the carp are found.

The thryssa and the yellow jaws,
And sturgeons, large and lank, are there,
Which we, observant of the laws,
Offer in sacrifice, with prayer,
That Chou may hold its brightening way,
Nor o’er its fortunes come decay.