Short Poems

The little sardines of the tin
Lie calmly side by side within
So when our Victory is o'er
Briton shall lie at peace with Boer
We shall provide the tin, I guess
And Kruger will the oiliness.

I live in an age of varied powers and knowledge,
Of steam, science, democracy, journalism, art;
But when my love rises like a sea,
I have to go back to an obscure tribe and a slain man
To formulate a blessing.

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd,
The next in majesty, in both the last:
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third, she join'd the former two.

" TURN on the anvil twice or thrice
Your verse," was Horace's advice:
Religiously you follow that,
And hammer it til cold and flat.

Toil and grow rich,
What's that but to lie
With a foul witch
And after, drained dry,
To be brought
To the chamber where
Lies one long sought

The way is still clear, as if in dream;
I enter, but the man's already gone.
The mountain, dark blue — ancient Buddha's hair;
the clouds, ink-black — the patriarch's robes.
We gambled at chess, equally bad players!
Now, looking at his portrait, it seems a bit too gaunt.
But who can avoid this in a hundred years?
All one can do is stop scheming and be calm.

The traveler will rise at midnight
when the moon has sunk and stars still shine.
As dawn comes, he will leave the city gates;
toward sunset, reach the long river's bank.
At the edge of grass, alone he will set sail,
as birds begin to scatter in the mist.
He'll untie the hawser, and quickly move out
as evening light fragments on the waves.

Toward evening, the weather turns cold
and I moor my boat for the night by the shore.
Lying on my pillow, I can't fall asleep:
rain at night, on the roof of my lonely cabin.

This bamboo I painted a long time ago.
Now you want me to do another? — Impossible!
When the sparrow grows old
it becomes a clam in the sea.
You ask it to turn back into a sparrow,
but how can it fly again?

Tender mulberry leaves fill the basket-racks
with their delicate green;
fine rain, delightful breeze —
it's silkworm-raising time!
Outside, mud in beaks, the swallows are chattering:
" The news carried by summer cherries
has now come to the south "