love poems

BY LI T'AI-PO

From whose house do the invisible notes of a jade flute come flying?
The Spring wind scatters them. They fill the City of Lo Yang.
To-night, as the phrases form, I hear " The Snapped Willow. "
To whom do they not bring back the love of his old, early garden?

BY LI T'AI-PO

The silver-crested love-pheasants strutted upon the Pheasant Terrace.
Now the pheasants are gone, the terrace is empty, and the river flows on its old, original way.
Gone are the blossoms of the Palace of Wu and overgrown the road to it.
Passed the generations of the Chin, with their robes and head-dresses; they lie beneath the ancient mounds.

The three hills are half fallen down from Green Heaven.
The White Heron Island cuts the river in two.

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.

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.

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.

Be grave, woman for love
Still hungering as gardens
For rain though flowerless
What perfume now to rise
From weary expectation.

Be not wild to love,
Poor witch of mysteries
Whose golden age thy body's
Alchemy aburn was
Unto haggard ember.

Beauty's flesh to phantom
Wears unprosperous
And come but devils of
Chill omen to adore
The perforce chaste idolon.

Be grave, woman, to greet
The kiss, the clasp, the shudder which
Rage of thee from crafty
Lust unrolls — and think

Bitterly have I been contested for,
Though never have I counted numbers —
They were too many, less than all.
And kindly have I warded off
Contest and bitterness,
Given each a replica of love,
Beguiled them with fine images.

To their hearts they held them.
Her dear face, its explicitness!
Clearly, of all women, the immediate one
To these immediate men.

But the original woman is mythical,
Lies lonely against no heart.
Her eyes are cold, see love far off,
Read no desertion when love removes,

My words were delicately breathed
As Syren notes: the Cyprian's head
Never shone out more golden-wreathed
Than mine: but now I lie here dead.

A chattering swallow, bright and wild,
Whom one man loved for all her years —
Having loved her even as a child:
I leave him nothing but his tears.