Heat and cold, twilight and dawn succeed each other swiftly,
before I know it, already my second year in Chung-chou!
Shut up in my room, all I listen for are morning and evening drums;
climbing the tower, I gaze absently down on boats that come and go.
Enticed by oriole voices, I've come here under the blossoms;
spellbound by the color of the grasses, I sit by the water's edge.
Nothing but spring river, I never tire of watching it —
rounding sand spits, circling rocks, a rippling, murmuring green.

Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme, —
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
Thou needs't not hasten if thou dost stand fast .

This posture and this manner suit
Not that I have an ease in them
But that I have a horror
And so stand well upright—
Lest, should I sit and, flesh-conversing, eat,
I choke upon a piece of my own tongue-meat.

Three-span thatched hut opening on mountains,
one thread of mountain stream circling my lodge:
you mountain shapes, stream voices, don't feel glum —
three years of office ended, I'll be coming right back!

For those this mausoleum is erected
Who Stanford to the Upper House elected.
Their luck is less or their promotion slower,
For, dead, they were elected to the Lower.

" I never have been able to determine
Just how it is that the judicial ermine
Is safely guarded from predacious vermin. "
" It is not so, my friend; though in a garret
'Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it,
The vermin will get into it and wear it. "

" See, " cries the chorus of admiring preachers,
" How Providence provides for all His creatures! "
" His care, " the gnat said, " even the insects follows:
For us He has provided wrens and swallows. "

At Colored Rock by the Yangtze, Li Po's mound,
boundless green of circling fields, unending clouds —
Sad, the desolate grave, bones at the bottom of the Yellow Springs,
you whose works startled Heaven, made the earth tremble.
Poets they say are mostly ill-fortuned,
none among them luckless as you!