The columbine
is a graceful
slender creature;
A female seeking retirement,
and growing freest,
and most graceful
Where it is most alone.

Two ravens
Flew high, high in the sky,
And the sun shone
Upon their bellies and their wings
Long after
There was none of his light to be seen.

Young lambs
In a green pasture in the Coombe—
Thick legs,
Large heads,
Black staring eyes.

Say thou who liest here beneath,
To fall in battle is not death.
You, tho' no pall on you was cast,
Heard the first trump nor fear'd the last.

There are a hundred now alive
Who buz about the summer hive,
Alas! how very few of these
Poor little busy poet bees
Can we expect again to hum
When the next summer shall have come.

Force me (and force me you must if I do it) to write in heroics,
Taking (as model in English) the meter of Homer and Virgil.
Leave me, O leave me at least my own hero, my own field of battle.
Sing then, O Goddess! O Muse! or in whatever name thou delightest,
Neither a cut-throat on land nor a vagabond over the ocean,
Offering me sacksful of wind . . I can buy them as cheaply of Russell,
Palmerston, Grey, Aberdeen, Jockey Derby, or Letterman Graham.

There is, alas! a chill, a gloom,
About my solitary room
That will not let one flowret bloom
Even for you:
The withering leaves appear to say,
‘Shine on, shine on, O lovely May!
But we meanwhile must drop away.’
Light! life! adieu.

For long parted from a sake gourd,
I've been familiar with the smells of herbs.
My gaunt face mirrored in the water,
with cool delight I comb the frost on my hair.
This still night the clear River lies white,
the fall sun now yellow during the day.
At times I pluck the stringed paulownia:
for a while it helps me console myself.

Lord Hideyoshi once in the past rested here.
His hegemony has sunk in two hundred years.
Autumn trees' yellow buries the temple of the past;
from the tea hut smoke rises from a single fire pit.

Thou art amazed, and dost point to the ocean. It seems to be burning,
Flame-crested billows in play dart round our night-moving bark.
Me it astonisheth not,—of the ocean was born Aphrodite,—
Did not a flame, too, proceed from her for us, in her son?