In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt -- a wind to freeze;
Sad patience -- joyous energies;
Humility -- yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity -- reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel -- Art.
Dawn rain has washed the city of its dust;
The refreshed hotel willows tremble in a gust.
My friendly advice, you dry up another glass,
You have no acquaintance beyond The Jade Gate Pass.
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, --
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
A cold rain blurs the edges of the river.
Night enters Wu.
In the level brightness of dawn
I saw my friend start alone for the Ch'u mountain.
I gave him this message for my friends and relations:
My heart is a piece of ice in a jade cup.
This is the Amy Lowell translation of a poem by Tang Dynasty Poet, Wang Changling (王昌齡) --a.k.a. Shaobo (少伯)
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down
from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there
uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made
me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous
leaves standing alone there without its
friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain
number of leaves upon it, and twined
around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in
sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own
dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than
of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it
makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens
there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat
space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a
friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town --
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down --
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig --
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
All wish to return,
Hoping others will come:
A clear water ride
Where strange flowers bud,
And lime-green parrots fly
The willows, to and from --
The mountain folk arrive
Deep bowls fill with wine...
To take a life beyond
And not end in ash,
But still be of nature;
Who's up to that task?
NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a crude translation of the thirteenth of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 精神, and it has been translated as: “Essential,” “Animal Spirits,” and “Spirit.”
(For Alain Loch)
Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.
Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.
Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.
Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 