Short Poems

Dawn: I half-open the gate;
last night the east wind blew wild.
All the blossoms have fallen from the trees:
the ground is covered with the fragrance of white clouds.

I sit alone on a rock by the stream;
the woods are deserted, full of autumn feeling.
Late at night, the mountain moon is white
and dew from the pines drips cool on my clothes.

“What does the little boy love?”
He loves this room of fragrant plants!
He wants to mount a flying dragon
and fly to heaven, to see the red sun.

“What does the little boy dream of?”
At night I dreamed of a brush sprouting flowers.
And where were the roots of the flowers?
In the heart of hearts, which is my home!

People say the sun is in heaven;
I say the sun is in the heart.
Don't you see that when the rooster crows
it clearly responds with the sound of temple bells?

I was a lover once—and were not you?
A reveller I joined gay Pleasure's crew.
But did not others share my merriment?
A madman I? But God my madness sent.
To-day enough. The gray hairs gather fast
And say that age has come and folly passed.
When it was time I sported with the throng,
But now to Wisdom all my days belong.

The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
For the wild hunter and the bison seeks,
In the changed world below; and finds alone
Their graven semblance in the eternal stone.

A NCHURUS in t' a gulph himselfe did cast,
To saue his friends and country men from spoile;
Kinde-heart he burnes, and still away doth waste,
Whose bowels with most bitter torment broile.
That others by his plague (such was his care)
Might of that euer-burning pit beware.

A MPHILOCUS with cleere fore-sight descries
Furture euents; and of strange wonders tells:
That councel-close which in God's bozome lies,
He can disclose by most almighty spells;
Yet he bewitcht himselfe could not for-see
That he should (as he is) a cuckold bee.

S OPHRON the poet most obscurely writes,
And yet he thinkes his fame's as bright as sunne;
Each woord a sentence weighes, which he indites,
To wit, a sentence of damnation:
His lines lacke sence, in vtter darkenesse framde;
Good reason then his writings should be damnd.