My name -- my country -- what are they to thee!
What, whether base or proud my pedigree?
Perhaps I far surpass'd all other men--
Perhaps I fell below them all -- what then?
Suffice it, stranger! that thou seest a tomb--
Thou know'st its use -- it hides -- no matter whom.
825
An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me—
With them would Harbor be—
An everywhere of silver,
With ropes of sand
To keep it from effacing
The track called land.
So-shu dreamed,
And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee, and a butterfly,
He was uncertain why he should try to feel like anything else,
Hence his contentment.
As much as someone could plow in one day
They called an acre;
As much as a person could die in one instant
A lifetime--
Here where the roses blossom, where vines round the laurels are twining,
Where the turtle-dove calls, where the blithe cricket is heard,
Say, whose grave can this be, with life by all the Immortals
Beauteously planted and deck'd?--Here doth Anacreon sleep
Spring and summer and autumn rejoiced the thrice-happy minstrel,
And from the winter this mound kindly hath screen'd him at last.
Warped… gland-dry…
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space…
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone…
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp… as of innumerable feet.
old pond.....
a frog leaps in
water's sound
Up to your crown, O willow, dressed in the green of jades,
Myriads of twigs so verdant, droop like your silken braids.
Who knows who the tailor is, who's cut your leaves so fine? It's
The vernal winds past February, sharp as the scissors' blades.
Philo with twelve years' study hath been grieved
To be understood ; when will he be believed?
