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Wang Ch'ang-ling
At Hibiscus Inn
Parting with Hsin Chien
With this cold night-rain hiding the river, you have come
into Wu.
In the level dawn, all alone, you will be
starting for the mountains of Ch'u.
Answer, if they
ask of me at Lo-yang:
"One-hearted as ice in a
crystal vase."
In Her Quiet Window
Too young to have learned what sorrow means,
Attired for spring, she climbs to her high chamber. . .
.
The new green of the street-willows is wounding her
heart -
Just for a title she sent him to war.
A Song of the Spring Palace
Last night, while a gust blew peach-petals
open
And the moon shone high on the Palace Beyond
Time,
The Emperor gave P'ing-yang, for her
dancing,
Brocades against the cold
spring-wind.
A Sigh in the Court of Perpetual
Faith
(Written to Music)
She brings a broom at dawn to the Golden Palace
doorway
And dusts the hall from end to end with her
round fan,
And, for all her jade-whiteness, she
envies a crow
Whose cold wings are kindled in the
Court of the Bright Sun.
Over the Border
(Written
to Music)
The moon goes back to the time of Ch'in, the wall to the
time of Han,
And the road our troops are travelling
goes back three hundred miles. . . .
Oh, for the
Winged General at the Dragon City -
That never a
Tartar horseman might cross the Yin Mountains!
With My Brother at the South Study
Thinking in the Moonlight of Vice-Prefect Ts'uei in
Shan-yin
Lying on high seat in the south study,
We have lifted the curtain - and we see the rising
moon
Brighten with pure light the water and the
grove
And flow like a wave on our window and our
door.
It will move through the cycle, full moon and
then crescent again,
Calmly, beyond our wisdom,
altering new to old.
. . . Our chosen one, our
friend, is now by a limpid river -
Singing, perhaps,
a plaintive eastern song.
He is far, far away from
us, three hundred miles away.
And yet a breath of
orchids comes along the wind.
At a Border-Fortress
(Written to Music)
Cicadas complain of thin mulberry-trees
In the Eighth-month chill at the frontier pass.
Through the gate and back again, all along the road,
There is nothing anywhere but yellow reeds and
grasses
And the bones of soldiers from Yu and from
Ping
Who have buried their lives in the dusty
sand.
. . . Let never a cavalier stir you to
envy
With boasts of his horse and his horsemanship.
Under a Border-Fortress
(Written to Music)
Drink, my horse, while we cross the autumn water!
-
The stream is cold and the wind like a
sword,
As we watch against the sunset on the sandy
plain,
Far, far away, shadowy
Ling-t'ao.
Old battles, waged by those long
walls,
Once were proud on all men's
tongues.
But antiquity now is a yellow
dust,
Confusing in the grasses its ruins and white
bones.
