In the bare and barren north there is the dark and vast ocean,--the Pool of Heaven.
In it there is a fish, several thousand lî in breadth, while no one knows its length. Its name is the kuēn.
There is (also) a bird named the péng; its back is like the Thài mountain, while its wings are like clouds all round the sky. On a whirlwind it mounts upwards as on the whorls of a goat's horn for 90,000 lî, till, far removed from the cloudy vapours, it bears on its back the blue sky, and then it shapes its course for the South, and proceeds to the ocean there.
A quail by the side of a marsh laughed at it, and said, 'Where is it going to? I spring up with a bound, and come down again when I have reached but a few fathoms, and then fly about among the brushwood and bushes; and this is the perfection of flying. Where is that creature going to?'
This shows the difference between the small and the great.
In it there is a fish, several thousand lî in breadth, while no one knows its length. Its name is the kuēn.
There is (also) a bird named the péng; its back is like the Thài mountain, while its wings are like clouds all round the sky. On a whirlwind it mounts upwards as on the whorls of a goat's horn for 90,000 lî, till, far removed from the cloudy vapours, it bears on its back the blue sky, and then it shapes its course for the South, and proceeds to the ocean there.
A quail by the side of a marsh laughed at it, and said, 'Where is it going to? I spring up with a bound, and come down again when I have reached but a few fathoms, and then fly about among the brushwood and bushes; and this is the perfection of flying. Where is that creature going to?'
This shows the difference between the small and the great.
Comments