Short Poems

Teach me, dearest, how to win thee
For the worth is not in me.
Let the blessed light within thee
Make me liker unto thee.
All my heart's unwearied loving
But a broken thing would be
Save that with most kind approving
Thy redeeming eye should see.

Wan Silence lying lip on ground,
An outcast Angel from the Heaven of sound,
Prone and desolate
By the shut Gate.

Is it a cuckoo that cries?
Is it the willow that is blue?
Row away, row away!
Several roofs in a far fishing village
swim in the mist.
Chigukch'ong chigukch'ong osawa.
Boy, fetch an old net!
Fishes are climbing against the stream.

A puff of east wind ruffles
the stream's surface into ripples.
Raise sail, raise sail!
Let's go to West Lake
by the East.
Chigukch'ong chigukch'ong osawa.
Hills pass by,
more hills greet us.

“Why don't the men propose, mamma,
Why don't the men propose?
Each one seems coming to the point,
And then away he goes.”
“They are frightened at your cost, my dear;
They are thinking of your clothes.”

A MID thy children's children and thy books,
Thy ready tools, thy garden's teeming mold,
Peace on thy lips and health in all thy looks,
Thou teachest the fine art of growing old.

'Tis the rose's own beauty that makes it a rose,
Not the rich one who owns it, nor pot where it grows.
If odor and tinting be missing, who cares
What garden it cumbers or what name it wears?

What amuses you in the sound
of rain on the clear stream?
O flowers and trees of the hill,
you shake and laugh?
Take pleasure, then, while you may;
only a few more spring days.

I met in a merchant's place
Diana:
lithe body and flowerlike face.

Through the woods I had looked for her
and beside the waves.

Oh, who regards a wounded soul's lamenting,
Grieving to hear him grievously complaining?
Oh, who affects a sinner's sad repenting,
Or lends an ear to Music's mournful straining?
Alas! there 's now no sorrowful relation—
No sad relation
Can melt our frozen hearts into compassion,
Into compassion.