The Book of Songs

One of the five Confucian classics, The Book of Songs (Shijing) is the oldest collection of poetry in world literature and the finest treasure of traditional songs left from antiquity. Where the other Confucian classics treat "outward things: deeds, moral precepts, the way the world works, " as Stephen Owen tells us in his foreword, The Book of Songs is "the classic of the human heart and the human mind."