Ten Songs from the Chinese

O floating clouds that swim in heaven above
Bear on your wings these words to him I love. . . .
Alas, you float along nor heed my pain,
And leave me here to love and long in vain!
I see other dear ones to their homes return,
And for his coming shall not I too yearn?
Since my lord left--ah me, unhappy day!--
My mirror's dust has not been brushed away;
My heart, like running water, knows no peace,
But bleeds and bleeds forever without cease.

At the Yellow-Crane pagoda, where we
  stopped to bid adieu,
The mists and flowers of April seemed
  to wish good speed to you.
At the Emerald Isle, your lessening sail had
  vanished from my eye,
And left me with the River, rolling onward to the sky.

The clear dawn creeps into the convent old,
The rising sun tips its tall trees with gold,--
As, darkly, by a winding path I reach
Dhyâna's hall, hidden midst fir and beech.
Around these hills sweet birds their pleasure take,
Man's heart as free from shadows as this lake;
Here worldly sounds are hushed, as by a spell,
Save for the booming of the altar bell.

Here in this inn no friend is nigh;
We sit alone, my lamp and I,
  A thousand miles from love and smiles,
To see another year pass by.

Ah me, that ever I was born!
Is life worth living, thus forlorn?
  Youth, beauty, pass; and yet alas
It will be spring tomorrow morn.

The willow sprays are yellow fringed,
  the grass is gaily green;
Peach-blooms in wild confusion with
  the perfumed plum are seen;
The eastern breeze sweeps past me,
  yet my sorrows never go,
And the lengthening days of spring to me
  mean lengthening days of woe.

Bright in the void the mirror moon appears,
To the hushed music of the heavenly spheres,
Full orbed, while autumn wealth beneath her lies,
On her eternal journey through the skies.
Oh may we ever walk within the light
Nor lose the true path in the eclipse of night!
Oh let us mount where rays of glory beam
And purge our grossness in the Silver Stream!

A petal falls! -- the spring begins to fail,
And my heart saddens with the growing gale.
Come then, ere autumn spoils bestrew the ground,
Do not forget to pass the wine-cup round.
Kingfishers build where man once laughed elate,
And now stone dragons guard his graveyard gate!
Who follows pleasure, he alone is wise;
Why waste our life in deeds of high emprise?

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When the Bear athwart was lying
And the night was just on dying,
And the moon was all but gone,
How my thoughts did ramble on!

Then a sound of music breaks
From a lute that some one wakes,
And I know that it is she,
The sweet maid next door to me.

And as the strains steal o'er me
Her moth-eyebrows rise before me,
And I feel a gentle thrill
That her fingers must be chill.

But doors and locks between us
So effectually screen us
That I hasten from the street
And in dreamland pray to meet.

Forth from the eastern gate my steeds I drive,
  And lo! a cemetery meets my view;
Aspens around in wild luxuriance thrive,
  The road is fringed with fir and pine and yew.
Beneath my feet lie the forgotten dead,
  Wrapped in a twilight of eternal gloom;
Down by the Yellow Springs[2] their earthly bed,
  And everlasting silence is their doom.
How fast the lights and shadows come and go!
  Like morning dew our fleeting life has passed;
Man, a poor traveller on earth below,
  Is gone, while brass and stone can still outlast.
Time is inexorable, and in vain
  Against his might the holiest mortal strives;
Can /we/ then hope this precious boon to gain,
  By strange elixirs to prolong our lives? . . .
Oh, rather quaff good liquor while we may,
  And dress in silk and satin every day!