Short Poems

My little boat emerges at Heng-t'ang;
the morning air is fresh in the West Mountains.
Here women sweat away at the water-wheels,
while young men take joy rides in palanquins!
Wheat being threshed — pounding sounds from every house;
tea leaves being picked — everyone carries baskets.
The scenery is wonderful here in Wu,
and the farm scenes are the best of all.

My loneliness —
I snuggle it up
against the back of another

" My lord must be secretly coming in. The wheeled door at the back
squeaks, squicks — that wheeled door at the back!
My secret lover — is he a dog? — couldn't open the door and groaned! "
" Dagger by the pillow, sword at the screen joint,
I'm coming secretly. Where are you sleeping? "

My mother said that I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood,
The wood was dark; the grass was green;
In came Sally with a tambourine,
I went to the sea--no ship to get across;
I paid ten shillings for a blind white horse;
I up on his back and was off in a crack,
Sally, tell my Mother I shall never come back.

Pens to mend, and hands to guide.
Oh who would a schoolmaster be?

My love is male and proper-man
And what he'd have he'd get by chase,
So I must cheat as women can
And keep my love from off my face.
'Tis folly to my dawning, thrifty thought
That I must run, who in the end am caught.

My lefe is faren in a lond--
Alas! why is she so?
And I am so sore bound
I may nat com her to.
She hath my hert in hold,
Where-ever she ride or go,
With trew love a thousandfold.

My Lady Spring is dressed in green,
She wears a primrose crown,
And little baby buds and twigs
Are clinging to her gown;
The sun shines if she laughs at all,
But if she weeps the raindrops fall.

My heart, thinking
"How beautiful he is"
Is like a swift river
Which though one dams it and dams it,
Will still break through.

My heart that was so passionless
Leapt high last night when I saw you!
Within me surged the grief of years
And whelmed me with its endless rue.
My heart that slept so still, so spent,
Awoke last night,—to break anew!