English

Cold, wet leaves
Floating on moss-coloured water,
And the croaking of frogs—
Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.

Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all;
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come—
Nor know what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.

I had a chair at every hearth,
When no one turned to see,
With 'Look at that old fellow there,
And who may he be?'
And therefore do I wander now,
And the fret lies on me.

The road-side trees keep murmuring.
Ah, wherefore murmur ye,
As in the old days long gone by,
Green oak and poplar tree?
The well-known faces are all gone:
And the fret lies on me.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Eastern mountains
and western mountains;
land of Ch'in
and land of Han.
Light, light clouds
over the city;
flowing, flowing water
through past and present.
Crumbling ruins,
plowed under on terraced slopes;
woodcutters chatting
as they come home at evening.
Even in decline
there are “better” and “worse”;
King Yu
was worst of all.

Truly a cottage
where
the leaves
on the grasses
have
blossomed as words—
a place, too,
blessed abundantly
by the work
of rain and dew.

Out of
the stillness
of my own breast
emerges
the rising moon;
and when I turn to look at it—
the moon
in clumps of cloud.

Spend yourself now!
Spring winds blowing
before cherries bloom.

Sweet mother, in a minute's span
Death parts thee and my love of thee;
Sweet love, that yet art living man,
Come back, true love, to comfort me.
Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!
But my love comes not any day.

As roses, when the warm West blows,
Break to full flower and sweeten spring,
My soul would break to a glorious rose
In such wise at his whispering.
In vain I listen; wellaway!
My love says nothing any day.

You that will weep for pity of love
On the low place where I am lain,