ABSTRACT
Students of medieval Chinese literature can never afford to take for granted the peculiar qualities and characteristics of the physical objects referred to by poets. The Han rhapsodists, as one might expect, made frequent mention of the halcyon in a like fashion in their extravagant compositions. The marvelously burnished color and exotic nature of halcyon feathers rendered them a most appropriate gift for a sovereign. The desirability of halcyon feathers is further illustrated in an entry in the Wu annals for the autumn of 235, where the people read that an envoy of the northern state of Wei came to the Wu court for the purpose of trading horses for glittering southern treasures—specifically, pearls, halcyon feathers, and tortoise-shell. To the poets between Han and T’ang, the halcyon was primarily an ornamental bird, less significant of its peculiar avian qualities than it was of affluence, leisure, and a touch of symbolically exotic nature.
