Short Poems

When so many minstrels there are,
How it pains me, alas, to know it!
Who from the earth drives poetry far?
Who but the poet!

When the sky is blue, the water over the sandy bottom is green.
They have dropped newspapers on it, cans, a bedspring, sticks and stones;
but these the patient waters corrode, those a patient moss covers.

A ROUND , a round, a round, boys, a round,
Let mirth fly aloft, and sorrow be drowned.
Old sack, and old songs, and a merry old crew
Can charm away cares when the ground looks blue.

Its body consumed, haply by crying,
There remains only the cicada's shell.

'T WAS in another's pangs I hither came;
'Tis in mine own that I anon depart.
O Birth, thou doorway hung with swords of flame,
How like to Death thou art!

Go show the bee that stung your hand,
The sweetest flower in all the land;

Then, from its bosom, she will bring
The honey that will cure the sting.

Tchirek River
Lies under the Dark Mountains:
Where the sky is like the sides of a tent
Stretched down over the Great Steppe.
The sky is gray, gray:
And the steppe wide, wide:
Over grass that the wind has battered low
Sheep and oxen roam.

A ha'penny here, an' a ha penny there,
Fourpence-ha'penny and a ha'penny mair;
A ha'penny weet, an' a ha'penny dry,
Fourpence-ha'penny an' a ha'penny forby—
How much is that?

This constellation, with its seven high stars,
Is Kê-shu lifting his sword in the night:
And no more barbarians, nor their horses, nor cattle,
Dare ford the river boundary.

Leaving one's boy favorite in a priest's charge
A one-log bridge
A skipping race on stone steps
Gossip about one's master.