Short Poems

Let's tread on fragrant grasses
and pick orchids and angelica.
Stop the boat, stop the boat!
What have I taken aboard
on my boat small as a leaf?
Chigukch'ong chigukch'ong osawa.
Nothing except mist when I set sail,
when I row back, the moon.

Let's stop angling and see
the moon through the bamboo awning.
Drop anchor, drop anchor!
Night settles,
the cuckoo sings a sweet song.
Chigukch'ong chigukch'ong osawa.
The heart shouts its peak of joy,
I have lost my way in the dark.

Truly the poet is omnipotent:
His magic alters melody of birds,
Puts life, love, glory, into dead cold words,
Conjures all angels 'neath the gray sky's tent,
Bathes common things in light Hesperian. Thus
My garden I prefer to yours, Alcinoüs.

O, but one visitant, the nightingale!
Throb, throb, wild voice, through passionate twilight hours!
Love is thy gift from the Eternal Powers;
Yet in thy song there seems a tragic wail,
Because in Argos, ages long ago,
A poet turned thy lyric wooing into woe.

Sometimes there comes a friendly visitant,
Brimmed with the life o' the town, rewarding me
Well for my mutton and my Burgundy;
And so we laugh together at fraud and cant,
While everywhere is heard a flutter of wings,
And winter's chorister, the unwearying redbreast, sings.

And you may see me, if you pass this way,
Lean on my gate and look into the road,
And listen to the skylark's joyous ode—
Thoughtful, not oft cigarless. Will you say,
‘Who wears that velvet coat, a trifle tattered,
That curious cool straw hat, which wind and rain have battered?’

I shall behold it: I shall see the utter
Glory of sunrise heretofore unseen,
Freshening the woodland ways with brighter green,
And calling into life all wings that flutter,
All throats of music and all eyes of light,
And driving o'er the verge the intolerable night.

No: I shall pass into the Morning Land
As now from sleep into the life of morn;
Live the new life of the new world, unshorn
Of the swift brain, the executing hand;
See the dense darkness suddenly withdrawn,
As when Orion's sightless eyes discerned the dawn.

Is life a dream, and death a sleep, and love
The only thing immortal? Who would care
To be received into the ambient air,
Or traverse æther like a cloud, above
The happy homes of mortals? Must the soul
Be formlessly absorbed into the infinite whole?

Will it be thus when the strange sleep of death
Lifts from the brow, and lost eyes live again?
Will Morning dawn on the bewildered brain
To cool and heal? And shall I feel the breath
Of freshening winds that travel from the sea,
And meet thy loving laughing eyes, Earine?