Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Pavillion
I came here a wanderer
thinking of home,
remembering my far away Ch'ang-an.
And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavillion,
I heard a beautiful bamboo flute
play "Falling Plum Blossoms."
It was late spring in a city by the river.
Li T'ai-po
tr. Hamil
Ballads Of Four Seasons: Spring
The lovely Lo Fo of the western land
Plucks mulberry leaves by the waterside.
Across the green boughs stretches out her white hand;
In golden sunshine her rosy robe is dyed.
'my silkworms are hungry, I cannot stay.
Tarry not with your five-horse cab, I pray.'
In Spring
Your grasses up north are as blue as jade,
Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches;
And at last you think of returning home,
Now when my heart is almost broken....
O breeze of the spring, since I dare not know you,
Why part the silk curtains by my bed?
A Song Of An Autumn Midnight
A slip of the moon hangs over the capital;
Ten thousand washing-mallets are pounding;
And the autumn wind is blowing my heart
For ever and ever toward the Jade Pass....
Oh, when will the Tartar troops be conquered,
And my husband come back from the long campaign!
To Tu Fu from Shantung
You ask how I spend my time--
I nestle against a treetrunk
and listen to autumn winds
in the pines all night and day.
Shantung wine can't get me drunk.
The local poets bore me.
My thoughts remain with you,
like the Wen River, endlessly flowing.
Li T'ai-po
tr. Hamil
Thoughts in a Tranquil Night
Athwart the bed
I watch the moonbeams cast a trail
So bright, so cold, so frail,
That for a space it gleams
Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams.
I raise my head, --
The splendid moon I see:
Then droop my head,
And sink to dreams of thee --
My Fatherland, of thee!
Seeing Off Meng Haoran For Guangling At Yellow Crane Tower
My old friend's said goodbye to the west, here at Yellow Crane Tower,
In the third month's cloud of willow blossoms, he's going down to Yangzhou.
The lonely sail is a distant shadow, on the edge of a blue emptiness,
All I see is the Yangtze River flow to the far horizon.
About Tu Fu
I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.
Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad--
in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wan, exhausted.
Poor old Tu Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing over poetry again.
Li Po
tr. Hamil
To Wang Lun
I was about to sail away in a junk,
When suddenly I heard
The sound of stamping and singing on the bank—
It was you and your friends come to bid me farewell.
The Peach Flower Lake is a thousand fathoms deep,
But it cannot compare, O Wang Lun,
With the depth of your love for me.
Mêng Hao-jan
True-Taoist, good friend Mêng,
Your madness known to one and all,
Young you laughed at rank and power.
Now you sleep in pine-tree clouds.
On moonlit nights floored by the Dragon.
In magic blossom deaf to the World.
You rise above - a hill so high.
I drink the fragrance from afar.