Even on a spring morning
my Sicilian pipe makes a sound of autumn
retracing thoughts past thousands of years

Epigrams must be curt, nor seem
Tail-pieces to a poet's dream.
If they should anywhere be found
Serious, or musical in sound
Turn into prose the two worst pages
And you will rank among the sages.

Entertained by song and dance here in this wine pavilion,
truly a palace of paradise where the soul melts completely away!
Having mastered all the " postures of joy " the Buddhists talk about,
in one spring evening, twenty-five cases
of perfect enlightenment!

Entering the Hall, she meets the new wife:
Leaving the gate, she runs into her former husband.
Words stick: she does not manage to say anything:
She presses her hands together and hesitates.
Agitates moon-like fan — sheds pearl-like tears —
Realizes she loves him just as much as ever:
That her present pain will never come to an end.

The Elephant is like a wall,
He is broad and very tall.
Upon his back we have a ride,
And swing and sway from side to side.

Stepping through the sleet
that falls and collects in puddles,
shivering, shivering,
he follows

East of the salt village, low and narrow —
the huts of the seaside folk.
The sixth month come, they boil down the salt,
as if boiling in water themselves!
They step outside and stand for a while
in the raging sun:
for them, this moment out of doors
counts as cooling off.

Early, my God, without delay,
I haste to seek Thy face;
My thirsty spirit faints away
Without Thy cheering grace.
So pilgrims on the scorching sand
Beneath a burning sky
Long for a cooling stream at hand,
And they must drink or die.

Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?
To what sublime and star-ypaven home
Floatest thou?
I am the image of swift Plato's spirit,
Ascending heaven--Athens doth inherit
His corpse below.

Each of us is like Balboa: once in all our lives do we,
Gazing from some tropic summit, look upon an unknown sea;

But upon the dreary morrow, every way our footsteps seek,
Rank and tangled vine and jungle block our pathway to the peak.