Skimming lightly, wheeling still, The swallows fly low Over the field in clouded days, The forest-field of Shiloh-- Over the field where April rain Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain Through the pause of night That followed the Sunday fight Around the church of Shiloh-- The church so lone, the log-built one, That echoed to many a parting groan And natural prayer Of dying foemen mingled there-- Foemen at morn, but friends at eve-- Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!) But now they lie low, While over them the swallows skim, And all is hushed in Shiloh.
How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;) How dear and dreadful they are to the earth; How they inure to themselves as much as to any -- What a paradox appears their age; How people respond to them, yet know them not; How there is something relentless in their fate, all times; How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.
Grown about by Fragrant bushes, Sunken in a winding valley, Where the clear winds blow And the shadows come and go, And the cattle stand and low And the sheep bells and the linnets Sing and tinkle musically. Between the past and the future, Those two black infinities Between which our brief life Flashes a moment and goes out.
Every time I have started for the Yellow Flower River, I have gone down the Blue-Green Stream, Following the hills, making ten thousand turnings. We go along rapidly, but advance scarcely one hundred li. We are in the midst of a noise of water, Of the confused and mingled sounds of water broken by stones, And in the deep darkness of pine-trees. Rocked, rocked, Moving on and on, We float past water-chestnuts Into a still clearness reflecting reeds and rushes. My heart is clean and white as silk; it has already achieved Peace; It is smooth as the placid river. I long to stay here, curled up on the rocks, Dropping my fish-line forever.
NOTE: This version was translated by Florence Ayscough and adapted by Amy Lowell in the book: Fir-Flower Tablets (1921) New York: Houghton Mifflin, p. 123
Above the blossoms sing the orioles: Kuan kuan, their clear notes. The girl with a face like jade Strums to them on her lute. Never does she tire of playing -- Youth is the time for tender thoughts. When the flowers scatter and the birds fly off Her tears will fall in the spring wind.
Translated of Burton Watson in: Cold Mountain: 100 poems by the T’ang poet Han-Shan, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 22
Tiger Riding for Beginners 