Classic Poem

Sea stretching endlessly,
downward no bottom, on the horizon no shore —
cloudy billows, mist-wrapped waves, and in the deepest zone,
there, they say, stand three spirit mountains.
On their peaks grow many death-defeating herbs,
those imbibing them sprout wings, become heavenly immortals.
The Ch'in ruler, Wu of the Han, trusting such tales,
sent magicians year after year to pluck the herbs.
But P'eng-lai, then as now, nothing but a name,
in a wilderness of hazy water nowhere to be found!
Sea stretching endlessly,
winds vast, unbounded —
eyes strain, but never can we spy P'eng-lai island,
and till we find P'eng-lai, we dare not go home!
Young boys, girls in braids, grow old in the boats,
Hsü Fu, Peaceful Accomplishment, tell manifold lies.
To Lady Shang-yüan, the Great Unity, vain supplications —
look there at Mount Li, the mound of Mou-ling,
in the end only a sad wind blowing over tangled grasses.
In all five thousand words of the Sage Ancestor of Mystic Origin,
no word of herbs,
no word of immortals,
no word of broad-day ascents to the blue heavens!