Excerpt from Coloured Stars: Versions of Fifty Asiatic Love Poems There is an opportunity of knowing in brilliant English translations much of the poetry of China and Japan, of India and Persia; and Arabic poetry is accessible; but I believe this book to be the first general English anthology of Asiatic verse. It is haphazard, as such books must be until some polyglot scholar gives a whole life to the matter. Variety was the only aim possible in a space so small, and therefore I have selected love poems of different centuries and of both primitive and subtle peoples. If readers care to turn to Anthologie de l'amour Ast'atique, compiled by Adolphe Thalasso, the late editor of the Revue Orientale in Constantinople, they will find a full and clear study of Asia's love poetry and see also how much I owe to this erudite and stimulating authority. M. Thalasso's work first showed me beauty and interest in the songs of almost unknown literatures. In some instances I have translated directly and only from his book, in others I have gratefully taken his direction and traced poems back to their sources. Versions, also, of some of the Chinese poems given here will be found in the incomparable Livre de jade of Mme. Judith Gautier. Reference to the texts of other poems is easily made at various libraries, except with regard to a dozen which Ihave personally collected. These last have not before, I think, been given a European form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.