Thou strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin
Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-
Burne!
Take then this quarto in thy fin
And, O thou stoker huge and stern,
The whole affair, outside and in,
Burn!
But save the true poetic kin,
The works of Mr. Robert Burn'
And William Wordsworth upon Tin-
Tern!
Upon the road of my life,
Passed me many fair creatures,
Clothed all in white, and radiant.
To one, finally, I made speech:
“Who art thou?”
But she, like the others,
Kept cowled her face,
And answered in haste, anxiously,
“I am good deed, forsooth;
You have often seen me.”
“Not uncowled,” I made reply.
And with rash and strong hand,
Though she resisted,
I drew away the veil
And gazed at the features of vanity.
She, shamefaced, went on;
And after I had mused a time,
I said of myself,
“Fool!”
From the outskirts of the town
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.
Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.
Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run.
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
Today, my office is chilly.
At once, I miss my mountain chum,
Who bound firewood in the valley,
Bringing it back to boil white stones.
I wish I could ladle some wine
To comfort on this stormy night.
But fallen leaves fill mountain hollows,
How could I find a track to follow?
This is poem #29 from the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首], entitled 寄全椒山中道士. The original poem in Simplified Chinese is:
今朝郡斋冷， 忽念山中客；
涧底束荆薪， 归来煮白石。
欲持一瓢酒， 远慰风雨夕。
落叶满空山， 何处寻行迹？
A precept-breaking monk for eighty years --
still, I'm ashamed of Zen that ignores cause and effect.
Sickness is the result of past karma.
Now how can I honor my endless connections?
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 126.
Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
So set its Sun in Thee
What Day be dark to me —
What Distance — far —
So I the Ships may see
That touch — how seldomly —
Thy Shore?
Wide are the meadows of night,
And daisies are shinng there,
Tossing their lovely dews,
Lustrous and fair;
And through these sweet fields go,
Wanderers amid the stars --
Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
'Tired in their silver, they move,
And circling, whisper and say,
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight
Through which we stray.
Note: the word “shinng” seems to be spelled that way in all sources. I don’t know whether it was a typo, dialectic, or a heterodox spelling.
Thoughts conveyed by way of short verse
May degrade in eccentricity.
With bowed head, lonely and friendless.
Face up, vast sky where all is free.
Like one string stretched to perfect pitch,
But lacking all resonancy.
NOTES: Earlier I posted a translation by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, entitled A One-String Harp that was contained in The Art of Writing (Boston: Shambhala; p. 15) This, however, is my own translation. The original poem in Simplified Chinese is:
或讬言于短韵，对穷迹而孤兴。
俯寂寞而无友，仰寥廓而莫承。
譬偏弦之独张，含清唱而靡应。
Tiger Riding for Beginners 