Great is the virtue of patterns! How are they coeval with heaven and earth? Now when the blue color parted from the yellow, and the round shape from the square, heaven and earth came into being. Like two interfolding jade mirrors, the sun and the moon reflect the images of heaven, while streams and mountains are interwoven into earthly patterns like gorgeous damask. They are manifestations of Dao. When earthly patterns and heavenly images take shape, inferior and superior places are established, and the two primal powers of heaven and earth are born. Yet, only when humans join in does the Great Triad form. Endowed with the divine spark of consciousness, humans are the essence of the five elements, the mind of heaven and earth. When mind is born, speech appears. When speech appears, writing comes forth. This is the way of Dao.

Harmony, harmony such as you see in poetry, is universal; with the beginnings of earth and sky it was born. The earth’s yellow with the sky’s dark crimson merge and mingle, but the earth is square, the sky round. The sun and the moon are twin discs of jade, hanging from the face of the sky; luxurious as silk, rivers and mountains glitter, ornamenting the shape of the earth. Such is the harmony of the Way. The luminosities are made manifest above, the beauties, the patterns promised below; all things being in place, heaven and earth hold their own. Add to these a third party, add Man, that condensation of sensitive intelligence, and you have the Trio, the paragon of the five elements, the soul and sentience of the universe. When sentience quickens, language takes form; and when language has taken form, harmony, the harmony of poetry, the harmony of the refined, the cultured, becomes clear. This is the Way of Being. Harmony pervades all things, all things animal and vegetal. Pards and tigers disport themselves gorgeously, dragons and phoenixes augurise in painted pomp. Cunningly coloured clouds surpass the painter in his craft, trees in bloom cast aspersions on the embroiderer’s genius. These are instances not of embellishment, but of Being-as-itself, of Nature. Sweet as flutes and viols, the woods whistle in unison; harmonious like cymbals and jade chimes, brooks and stones strike up a song. So shapes appear and structure emerges in them; so sounds arise and harmony is bom. If dumb objects without consciousness possess beauty in such measure, how can man, a noble vessel with a sentient heart, be without a sense of the harmony of poetry?