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The fable of cowherd and the weaving maiden sprouted in the Pre-Qin period, and did not form a story with integrated plots until Han Dynasty. The poetry, “All the way to the Altair” (“Tiao Tiao Qian Niu Xing”), marks the most vivid description in the Han Dynasty. The evolvement of the fable of cowherd and the weaving maiden has undergone the processes of deification, humanization, and plebification. This poem, as one of the evidences of these processes, is influenced by folklore to reflect the objective reality with fables to show the poet’s unique thinking on social life. Therefore, “All the way to the Altar” entails special value and charm. The fable of cowherd and the weaving maiden, a household story, as one of the Four Ancient Chinese Legends, has been around for more than 2000 years. Throughout the ages, men of letters sang about the painful and beautiful story in literary works, arousing the emotional consonance of myriads of people, who always look up to the sky trying to find the constellations while listening to the beautiful tale. The fable of cowherd and the weaving maiden sprouted in the Pre-Qin period, and basically forms a story with integrated plots in Han Dynasty. However, its evolvement has undergone a long period of history. The fable originates from the primitive belief of star worship. Because of the low productive forces, the people of that time were at the mercy of the forces of nature, confused about all kinds of natural phenomena. And thus intense awe and worship towards the great universe were generated. Naturally, those macroscopic and seemingly eternal stars are worshipped by the mass. In the ancient astronomical map, Altair, also known as Constellation of Ox, is one of the 28 Constellations and ranks second in the Seven Northern Tortoise-Snake Constellations. The Vega, also known as Tiansun, lies in the west side of the Milky Way, facing the Altair in the east side at a distance. As early as three thousand years ago, people at that time noticed the unique position of the Altair and Vega which spurred some association with the real life. The earliest written records should be “The Book of Songs.Xiao Ya.Da Dong”, chanting “Look at the Milky Way in the sky. The twinkling stars splendidly shine. The weaving girl stars in triangle way, keep on shuttling seven times a day. Although coming over and passing by, they can't weave nice coats of arms. Though the Altair stars brightly shine, they are not able to drive our carts. ” It well manifests that our ancestors have linked the heaven with the earth, applying the commonplace phenomenon to the relationship between those two constellations, adding an earthly flavor to the natural phenomenon. Therefore, although Altair and Vega are still constellations in the sky, their descriptions are somewhat linked with reality, rather than being purely objective. The weaver girl, originally the name of a constellation, has evolved into that of a goddess in the later literature Chunqiu Yuanmingbao and Huainanzi. It is stated in Bangu’s Ode to the Two Capitals, the statue of the Cowherd is placed in the left side of Kunming Pool and the weaver girl in the right . The wide range of the river resembles the boundlessness of the milky way; Li Shan in the note cited in The Imperial Palace of the Han Dynasty says that “there are two statues at the two sides of the Kunming Pool, namely ‘the cowherd’ and ‘the weaver girl,’. These show that in Han dynasty, the images of the cowherd and the weaver girl have been transformed from two constellations into two gods, more importantly, one is male and the other is female. Although the relationship of the two has not been elaborated, they are always connected. Besides, the image of their silently gazing at each other at the two sides of the Kunming Pool, naturally, will arouse people‘s imagination . Therefore, Taiwan scholar Wang Xiaolian thinks that in Ode to the Two Capitals, the cowherd and the weaver 2nd International Conference on Education Technology, Management and Humanities Science (ETMHS 2016) © 2016. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 708 girl have been personified, and hence he infers that their personification comes into being during the Western Han Dynasty with the Emperor Wu of Han and the Eastern Han Dynasty with the Emperor Ming of Han. Moreover, it is clearly dcumented in Huainanzi that the magpies will get together and form a bridge in the milky way in order to let the weaver girl reunite with the cowherd in the other side; Cui Shi of the Eastern Han Dynasty says in his Monthly Instructions for Four Classes of People that “two gods---the cowherd and the weaver girl will meet each other on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month”, which means that in t people’s imagination at that time, the two are not just close As a matter of fact, they are lovers. According to Wu dezhu’s Portrait Stone of the Han Dynasty, in Xiaotang Mountain Han Shrine (located at Xiaotangshan, Xiaolipu, Licheng County, Shandong Province), there is a piece of stone star atlas in which the Altair and the Vega are at the very two sides, and below the Vega is a girl who is weaving with a bird flying nearby. And Ying Shao in the Eastern Han Dynasty in his Development and Evolution of Customs says that on the lunar July 7th, the weaver girl will cross the milk river through the bridge formed by the magpies and that’s why the they will lose feathers on their heads on that day. Thus, it can be inferred that the legend of the cowherd and the weaver girl has been widely spread in public in the Han Dynasty. And the main frame of the story, to be concrete, firstly they are a couple of lovers, secondly they are kept away from each other by the milky river, and lastly they can only meet on the lunar July 7 with the help of the magpies has been formed. It is because of their vivid love story that the two are no longer two distant constellations, or two gods, but a couple of lovers with fresh and bones, and full of human emotions. Through fantasy and bold imagination, the weaver girl and the cowherd have been successfully transformed from constellation to god and finally to human beings. They are becoming more and more closed with people. And hence the images of the two constellations have no longer been mysterious, vague and remote, but instead friendly, life-like and vivid. To the end of Eastern Han dynasty, the Poem “The Two Silently Watch Each Other”, included in “Nineteen Old poems”, has been the only one that finely tells the story of the Cowherd and the Girl Weaver in a literary way. The poem goes that“Far, far away, the Herd-lad, Fair, fair, the weaving-maid.Deft white hands are weaving, Click, click, the loom moving. She is weaving all day long, Yet can’t get the cloth done.Like rain, her tears well down. Clear and shallow the milky way, When is the lovers’ meeting day? So wide is the stream here,They can gaze at each other,But cannot speak and hear!” Although this is a Yongwu poem, the stars are personified. So people can see a beautiful and sensible girl Waver who is also clever in mind and skillful in hand. She is tortured by the separation with the Cowherd and has got lovesickness, but it is impossible for her to break through the restraint of the Milky Way, so she has to grin and bear it. The sentence “She is weaving all day long, yet can’t get the cloth done. Like rain, her tears well down.” is the implicit interpretation of strong pain in the girl Waver’s heart. The poem is the most impressive description of the Cowherd and the Girl Weaver in Han Dynasty, which has been very infectious for thousands of years. “Nineteen Old poems” plays an important role in the course of Chinese poetry, which is a sign of the mature of literati poetry and has a deeply influence to the development of later poems. The author of the “Nineteen Old poems” is not only one person and not been written in the same time or place. But as the refined scholars from the lower middle class, they have similar experience and inspirations. So their poems are similar in content and style. In “Nineteen Old poems”, the poets usually express their complex and subtle emotions by poems, such as “Northwest has a Tall Building” and “Drove on the East Gate” etc. And it is rare to see a Yongwu poem like “The Two Silently Watch Each Other”. So why does the poet write such a poem? Is it a poem just for describing an object? Although the poem can prove that story of the Cowherd and the Girl Weaver has been basically formed and widespread, this is definitely not the reason why the poet writes it. This poem focuses on the expression of feelings, not description of objects. It takes advantage of this tragic love story to express his emotions and reflection to the real life. By the end of the Han Dynasty, the nineteen ancient poems, with social chaos and hard life, appears in the gradually turbulent times. In order to make a living, people, who live in middle or

All the way to the Altair and the fable of cowherd and the weaving maiden