Which lines in the poem indicate its theme?
a shadow
by henry wadsworth longfellow
i said unto myself, if i were dead,
what would befall these children? what would be
their fate, who now are looking up to me
for and furtherance? their lives, i said,
would be a volume wherein i have read
but the first chapters, and no longer see
to read the rest of their dear history,
so full of beauty and so full of dread.
be comforted; the world is very old,
and generations pass, as they have passed,
a troop of shadows moving with the sun;
thousands of times has the old tale been told;
the world belongs to those who come the last,
they will find hope and strength as we have done.

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.

c, have a good day ~matya