You walked by the riverside path
with the full pitcher upon your hip.
Why did you swiftly turn your face
and peep at me through your fluttering
veil?
That gleaming look from the dark
came upon me like a breeze that sends
a shiver through the rippling water
and sweeps away to the shadowy
shore.
It came to me like the bird of the
evening that hurriedly flies across the
lampless room from the one open
window to the other, and disappears
in the night.
You are hidden as a star behind the

I was walking by the road, I do not
know why, when the noonday was past
and bamboo branches rustled in the
wind.
The prone shadows with their out-
stretched arms clung to the feet of
the hurrying light.
The koels were weary of their
songs.
I was walking by the road, I do not
know why.
The hut by the side of the water is
shaded by an overhanging tree.
Some on was busy with her work,
and her bangles made music in the
corner.
I stood before this hut, I know not
why.

She dwelt on the hillside by edge
of a maize-field, near the spring that
flows in laughing rills through the
solemn shadows of ancient trees. The
women came there to fill their jars,
and travellers would sit there to rest
and talk. She worked and dreamed
daily to the tune of the bubbling
stream.
One evening the stranger came down
from the cloud-hidden peak; his locks
were tangled like drowsy snakes. We
asked in wonder, "Who are you?"
He answered not but sat by the
garrulous stream and silently gazed at

The fair was on before the temple.
It had rained from the early morning
and the day came to its end.
Brighter than all the gladness of
the crowd was the bright smile of
a girl who bought for a farthing a
whistle of palm leaf.
The shrill joy of that whistle floated
above all laughter and noise.
An endless throng of people came
and jostled together. The road was
muddy, the river in flood, the field
under water in ceaseless rain.
Greater than all the troubles of
the crowd was a little boy's trouble--

When I go alone at night to my
love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind
does not stir, the houses on both sides
of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud
at every step and I am ashamed.
When I sit on my balcony and listen
for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle
on the trees, and the water is still in
the river like the sword on the knees
of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly
--I do not know how to quiet it.
When my love comes and sits by

By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
as a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most
remembers, the living
and the dead both crying for help.

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
beneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire.

Where this lake is, there was a lake,
where these black pine grow, there grew black pine.

Where there is no teahouse I see a wooden teahouse

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,

Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel
To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel;
The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air,
But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare!

Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold --
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold;
The white foam spun behind us, and the black shark swam below,
As we gripped the kicking sweep-head and we made the galley go.

It was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and then --

I long to go over there to the further bank of the river.
Where those boats are tied to the bamboo poles in a line;
Where men cross over in their boats in the morning with
ploughs on their shoulders to till their far-away fields;
Where the cowherds make their lowing cattle swim across to the
riverside pasture;
Whence they all come back home in the evening, leaving the
jackals to howl in the island overgrown with weeds.
Mother, if you don't mind, I should like to become the boatman
of the ferry when I am grown up.

A pool was once congeal'd with frost;
The frogs, in its deep waters lost,

No longer dared to croak or spring;
But promised, being half asleep,
If suffer'd to the air to creep,

As very nightingales to sing.

A thaw dissolved the ice so strong,--
They proudly steer'd themselves along,
When landed, squatted on the shore,
And croak'd as loudly as before.