Short Poems

I once tore up a sapling to make myself a stick:
it clung to the earth, but I cut away its roots,
stripped off its twigs and bark;
a woman passing nodded her head as if to say, What a pity,
and I had no joy of the stick and threw it away.

‘Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot;
Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O!
The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O sweetest lass, and sweetest lass;
Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!’

( The Tournament ) The scene of the Epic is the ancient kingdom of the Kurus which flourished along the upper course of the Ganges; and the historical fact on which the Epic is based is a great war which took place between the Kurus and a neighbouring tribe, the Panchalas, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ.

According to the Epic, Pandu and Dhrita-rashtra, who was born blind, were brothers. Pandu died early, and Dhrita-rashtra became king of the Kurus, and brought up the five sons of Pandu along with his hundred sons.

Lord to thy flesh & bloud when I repayre
Where dreadfull ioys & pleasing tremblings are
Then most I rellish, most it does me good
When my soule faints & pynes & dies for food.
Did my synns murther thee? to make that playne
Thy peircd dead-liuing bodie bleeds againe.
Flow sadd sweet dropps what diff'ring things you doo
Reueale my synns; & seale my pardon too.

Lethum laetus adit dux qui se pro grege tradit,
Tradit et ut charus Pater hunc, Judas ut avarus.

Cupid did cry, his mother chid him so,
And all because the child had lost his bow.
But how! with no intent that she should have it
He met my Mistress and to her he gave it,
Excusing it: one was so like the other
That he mistook and took her for his mother.

Your smug silence,
playing the learned sage,
cannot compare
to drinking saké and
giving way to drunken tears.

If it is a fact
that all things that live
must someday die,
then while I am in this life
let me enjoy myself.

During this lifetime,
as long as there is pleasure,
then in the next life
I might as well become
an insect or a bird.

Along the way
of merriment in this world,
it must be
that giving way to drunken tears
is what provides relief.