Spring Night

Loving the spring evening alone, I step down to the garden,
a breeze, a soft moon, both comely and fair.
Were my clothes not to become soaked with dew,
I'd lie under cherry blossoms until the day breaks.

Dispossession

I WHO love this land, who love this wide valley,
The straight high temples of the hills, the river's curve,
The smooth unbroken water, the fertile meadows,
What is my love, what is this memory I serve?

I, a stranger from another land, a newcomer
Of two brief centuries ago, alien and pale,
Talking a strange tongue, looking over this vastness
With short-seeing eyes, dimly, behind a veil;

What should I, who was bred in square houses
With fear and a flintlock always ready at hand,

Love in Age

It was never more than a face,
An impression merely; a bit
Of failing landscape — her grace
Just caught as the rain-cloud split
And the air grew warm a space.

And now it is many years,
And I, with my thin hair gray,
Face wrinkled — perhaps by tears! —
'Tis strange how my yesterday
Of dead youth reappears.

I wonder if after all
I've any right to complain!
As the shadows weave on the wall,
And we feel the wash of rain
Through the light grown thin and small;

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