Short Poems

Were we able to tell
When old age would come our way
We would muffle the bell,
Lock the door and go away—
Let him call some other day.

If pleasures be mine
As aeons and aeons roll by,
Why should I repine
That under some future sky
I may live as butterfly?

Oh, climb to my lips,
Frail muse of the amber wine!
Joy to him who sips
Cups of fragrant sake wine
Flowing from some fount divine.

Though love has grown cold
The woods are bright with flowers,
Why not as of old
Go to the wildwood bowers
And dream of—bygone hours.

Like mist on the lees,
Fall gently, oh rain of Spring
On the orange trees
That to Ume's casement cling—
Perchance, she'll hear the love-bird sing.

Moon, somnolent, white,
Mirrored in a waveless sea,
What fickle mood of night
Urged thee from heaven to flee
And live in the dawnlit sea?

Winter? Spring! Who knows!
White buds from the plumtrees wing
And mingle with the snows
No blue skies these flowers bring,
Yet their fragrance augurs Spring.

Oh, were the white waves,
Far on the glimmering sea
That the moonshine laves,
Dream flowers drifting to me—
I would cull them, love, for thee.

Where'er I turn, upon a tomb I tread,
Lifeless the living and alive the dead;
The living fade away before mine eyes,
From their dim sepulchres the buried rise;
While I, nor dead nor living, wait the morn
When I shall die, and, dying, be reborn,
And walk the Earth rejuvenant and whole,
Among the living dead a deathless soul.

Tell me not what again, again
We hear about the Sedbergh rain;
Yes, with a kindly frown,
Full oft on Eden send the skies,
To spangle all her greeneries,
A dower of diamonds down!