Short Poems

When she flung her arms round me, with tenderest pressure,
My soul rose to Heaven in a rapturous flight:
And I let it ascend while I drank of the pleasure
Her honeyed lips gave me with frenzied delight.

Thou hast kissed my lips until they bleed,
Now kiss them till they heal;
And if thou hast not time by day,
When twilight shadows steal,
Wilt thou not have the long, long night,
Oh, well-beloved of me?
Ah, many a kiss, in that long night,
May pass 'twixt me and thee!

Who would have thought that a disease of the ordinary world
could touch you, an exiled immortal!
You love writing poetry, but don't care for your health;
so immersed in books, it has harmed your constitution.
Leaning against a tree, you must be whistling to yourself;
who is there to sit and talk to?
I wish I could come to you on a pair of wings:
we'd shout wildly, and get drunk for ten weeks!

Accustomed by now
to life
in the rocky narrows
of a garden stream,
broad, indeed,
to the ducks
must seem
the waters of Broad Pond.

At Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer
And plenty of bacon each day in the year;
We've a' thing that 's nice, and mostly in season—
But why always Bacon?—come, tell me a reason.

“He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door
Embittering all his state.”

Mount Yoshino—
I doubt
I'll be leaving it soon,
though friends I'm sure are waiting,
saying, “Once the blossoms have fallen—”

The weeping willow before my house now stores crows,
the crab apple behind my house past the peak of spring.
Fresh mud in swallow's beak, rain beyond the painted blinds;
bridges like geese in flight, I sing with the plain koto.
When we are melancholy, we're least inclined to talk;
the flowers, about to fall, emit the strongest scent.
Still unfree from the regret of seeing a ruddy face wilt,
I have described my inner thoughts to sing this song.

Him strong Genius urged to roam,
Stronger Custom brought him home.

“C OME , come,” said Tom's father, “at your time of life,”
—There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.—
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.”—
—“Why, so it is, father,—whose wife shall I take?”