Found at the FotL Book Sale dollar-a-bag day.

From earliest times to the 1940s. The translator says that his intent was to be as simple and literal as possible, thus no meter or rhyme. I have no idea what I'll be able to appreciate of these, or whether the introduction will be any use.

Robert Payne’s introductions are written with a romanticism and enthusiastic exoticism that I distrust as a guide. Consider this, from the final paragraph of the introduction to the Book of Songs:

As often in the history of poetry, the beginnings are the greatest. From this point Chinese poetry runs downhill. They were never to recapture this hallowed sense of the perfection of life. The fruit tree would be cultivated; the flowers would become more numerous, and possess other colors; there would be strange accretions, and still stranger cuttings implanted from the deserts of the northwest; but the garden would never be so beautiful again.

Luckily, however, Payne didn’t do the translations himself. Instead, he had them done by numerous native Chinese scholars, only "revising and editing" them in consultation with the scholars. He encouraged literalness in the translations. I do wonder, though, how much of his own ideas crept in during his revisions.

I've only read the Zhōu and Qín dynasty poems so far.