Short Poems

Out go the great red wedding-chamber candles.
Tomorrow in state the bride faces your parents.
She has finished preparing; she asks of you meekly
Whether her eyebrows are painted in fashion.

Finches flash yellow through the Imperial Grove
Of the Forbidden City, pale with spring dawn;
Flowers muffle a bell in the Palace of Bliss
And rain has deepened the Dragon Lake willows;
But spring is no help to a man bewildered,
Who would be like a cloud upholding the Light of Heaven,
Yet whose poems, ten years refused, are shaming
These white hairs held by the petalled pin.

The hill is bare! I only find
A stone, a sky, a twisted tree

Fighting on a bitter wind!
And that is all there is to see!

A tree, a hill, a wind, a sky,
Where nothing ever passes by!

How soiled the wreath which oft that strumpet, Fame,
Puts on the brazen forehead of the base!
Men lie, and plunder, and betray their race;
Then the State's coffer raises to their name
A statue, — let it mark eternal shame,
And obloquy, dishonor and disgrace.

I started off along the shore,
The sea shore at Tago,
And saw the white and glist'ning peak
Of Fuji all aglow
Through falling flakes of snow.

How oft the answers to our passing prayers
Drop down in forms our fancy ne'er foretold!
— Thus when, of late, consumed by wasting cares,
" Angels preserve us " from my lips up-rolled,
I'm sure I pictured not, — as thus I prayed, —
Angels preserving me ... with marmalade!

Oh, Life's a Fever and Death's a chill !
'Tis a disease of which all men are ill;
Earth for a Hospital surely was given —
Hell's an eternal relapse: Health is Heaven!!

To others let the sunbeams fly, —
Those smiles that dazzle, fade, and die, —
But give to me one ling'ring sigh,
As when you cast the roses by;
For then full surely I shall know
You were not glad that I should go,
But sometimes, in your heart, deplore
That we, on earth, must meet no more.

White Man, Greeting!
We near whose bones you stand were Iroquois.
The wide land which now is yours was ours.
Friendly hands have given back to us enough for a tomb.

I watch the tide come in from sea:
Lord, is there any tide for me?
So long, so long the sands were dry,
So long upon Life's shore I lay,
Feeling the waters ebb away,
Like seaweed that is left to die!
The tide comes in, it floods the sand:
Lord, is Thy coming near at hand?