Short Poems

Manners, they say, by climate alter not:
Who goes a drunkard will return a sot.
So lordly Juan, damn'd to lasting fame,
Went out a pickle, and came back the same.

Thou sleepest fast, and I with woeful heart
Stand here alone sighing and cannot fly:
Thou sleepest fast, when cruel Love his dart
On me doth cast, alas, so painfully!
Thou sleepest fast, and I, all full of smart,
To thee, my foe, in vain do call and cry:
And yet, methinkës, though thou sleepest fast
Thou dreamest still which way my life to wast.

Once more I saw him. In the lofty room,
Where oft with lights and company his tongue
Was trump to honest laughter, sate attired
A something in his likeness.—“Look!” said one,
Unkindly kind, “look up, it is your boy!”
And the dread changeling gazed on me in vain.

Your art has brought you great respect;
your skill has been applied to portraiture.
Now you close the door and decline visitors,
a man of leisure in the noisy city.
Along the roads, the sound of weeping:
the villagers are poor to the bone.
May I trouble you to take your magic brush
and paint me a picture of refugees?

This oriental country, year after year,
sends its long-journeying ships;
presenting a tribute of wind and moonlight,
they come to China.
I trust you will not view this as some trifling affair:
the world now is a single family.

Before the gate of Little Su
flowers fill each branch;
along the Bank of Master Su
young girls serve the wine.
You southern officials and northern inspectors:
here's where you must come!
There's no place in the entire world
like West Lake in Chiang-nan.

Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying.

Ten thousand things wound my heart when you're before my eyes,
I, lean and withered, to sleep facing such a flower!
I've used up all my yellow gold teaching you songs and dances—
go stay with someone else now, make a young man happy.

I beginne to waine in sight;
Shortly I shall bid goodnight:
Then no gazing more about,
When the Tapers once are out.

'Tis said, as Cupid danc't among
The Gods, he down the Nectar flung;
Which, on the white Rose being shed,
Made it for ever after red.