BY LI T'AI-PO

From little, little girls, they have lived in the Golden House.
They are lovely, lovely, in the Purple Hall.
They dress their hair with hill flowers,
And rock-bamboos are embroidered on their dresses of open-work silk gauze.
When they go out from the retired Women's Apartments,
They often follow the Palace chairs.
Their only sorrow, that the songs and wu dances are over,
Changed into the five-coloured clouds and flown away.

Because the moonlight deceives
Therefore I love it.

Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night!
See where it casts the shadow of that tree
Far out upon the grass. And every gust
Of light night wind comes laden with the scent
Of opening flowers which never bloom by day:
Night-scented stocks, and four o'clocks, and that
Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall stalk,
The evening primrose, comrade of the stars.
It seems as though the garden which you love
Were like a swinging censer, its incense
Floating before us as a reverent act
To sanctify and bless our night of love.

The instrument of your reason being tuned
To the pitch of madness and desire to wound,
You would not drink my health save from her glass
Who drinks my death: can such things come to pass?
But I considered, striving to be just
(Who strive not to be loving, for I must),
That we, your vassals bound by every oath,
Are thus your vessels, and you drink from both:
That she and I, being each of us a woman,
Taste the elixir of your lips in common;
Though I alone am privy to the fact;
I have your half, and lesser than exact:

Let not the heart's intention
To be both brave and good
Cheat that devoted engine
Of spiritual food.

Because it is not cruel,
Because it is not great,
Provide it fire, and fuel
Sufficient for its state.

Ah, poor machine, and faithful,
That limps without a wing!
My love, be never wrathful
With this imperfect thing.

Song

1

On a bank, beside a willow,
Heaven her cov'ring, earth her pillow,
Sad Amynta sighed alone;
From the cheerless dawn of morning,
Till the dews of night returning,
Singing thus she made her moan:
" Hope is banished,
Joys are vanished,
Damon my beloved is gone!

2

Time, I dare thee to discover
Such a youth, and such a lover;
O so true, so kind was he!

I

AN empty glove — long withering in the grasp
Of Time's cold palm. I lift it to my lips, —
And lo, once more I thrill beneath its clasp,
In fancy, as with odorous finger-tips
It reaches from the years that used to be
And proffers back love, life and all, to me.

II

Ah! beautiful she was beyond belief:
Her face was fair and lustrous as the moon's;

Autumn, dear to walkers with your streaks and carpets
Of bright colours, spread like a boy's gift for the true boy,
Sacred for the love flowing over and unuttered even in making —
Have you too left me?

Never was trust so equal between man and his dear mates
Of tree or watercourse flowing by Cranham or past Hartpury.
Eternity promised: what unfaith could cause any shaking
In that love, near bereft me?

Earth spaces breathing dark incense (as the kind shower wets)
And woodlands stirring to blood-light, the heart all ready —

Dawn brings lovely playthings to the mind,
But sunset fights and goes down in battle blind.
The banners of dawn spread over in mystery,
But nightfall ends a boast and a pageantry.

After the halt of dawn comes the slow moving of
Time, till the sun's hidden rush and the day is admitted.
Sunset dies out in a smother of something like love,
With dew and the elm-hung stars and owl outcries half-witted.

Loving the breeze on clifftops, I climb to a shelter of pines,
entranced by moonlight, beside the pond sit on a stone ledge,
and with these clouds and fountains I form bonds of karma —
in another life, certain to be a monk of this mountain!