Since beauty is honoured all over the Empire,
How could Xi Shi remain humbly at home? –
Washing clothes at dawn by a southern lake –
And that evening a great lady in a palace of the north:
Lowly one day, no different from the others,
The next day exalted, everyone praising her.
No more would her own hands powder her face
Or arrange on her shoulders a silken robe.
And the more the King loved her, the lovelier she looked,
Blinding him away from wisdom.
…Girls who had once washed silk beside her
Were kept at a distance from her chariot.
And none of the girls in her neighbours’ houses
By pursing their brows could copy her beauty.
The Beautiful Xi Shi - 西施咏
A poem to a Taoist Hermit on Ch’uan-Chiao Mountain - 寄全椒山中道士
My office has grown cold today;
And I suddenly think of my mountain friend
Gathering firewood down in the valley
Or boiling white stones for potatoes in his hut…
I wish I might take him a cup of wine
To cheer him through the evening storm;
But in fallen leaves that have heaped the bare slopes,
How should I ever find his footprints!
Falling Petals - 落花
Gone is the guest from the Chamber of Rank,
And petals, confused in my little garden,
Zigzagging down my crooked path,
Escort like dancers the setting sun.
Oh, how can I bear to sweep them away?
To a sad-eyed watcher they never return.
Heart’s fragrance is spent with the ending of spring
And nothing left but a tear-stained robe.
Seeing Li Bai in a Dream I - 梦李白・其一
There are sobs when death is the cause of parting;
But life has its partings again and again.
…From the poisonous damps of the southern river
You had sent me not one sign from your exile –
Till you came to me last night in a dream,
Because I am always thinking of you….
I wondered if it were really you,
Venturing so long a journey.
You came to me through the green of a forest,
You disappeared by a shadowy fortress…
Yet out of the midmost mesh of your snare,
How could you lift your wings and use them?
…I woke, and the low moon’s glimmer on a rafter
Seemed to be your face, still floating in the air.
…There were waters to cross, they were wild and tossing;
If you fell, there were dragons and rivermonsters.
Seeing Li Bai in a Dream II - 梦李白・其二
This cloud, that has drifted all day through the sky,
May, like a wanderer, never come back….
Three nights now I have dreamed of you –
As tender, intimate and real as though I were awake.
And then, abruptly rising to go,
You told me the perils of adventure
By river and lake – the storms, the wrecks,
The fears that are borne on a little boat;
And, here in my doorway, you rubbed your white head
As if there were something puzzling you.
…Our capital teems with officious people,
While you are alone and helpless and poor.
Who says that the heavenly net never fails?
It has brought you ill fortune, old as you are.
…A thousand years’ fame, ten thousand years’ fame-
What good, when you are dead and gone?
A Spring Feast - 社日（一作张演诗）
The paddy crops are waxing rich
upon the Goose-Lake hill;
The fowls have just now gone to roost,
the grunting pigs are still;
The mulberry casts a lengthening shade-
the festival is o’er,
And tipsy revellers are helped
each to his cottage door.