* * * * *

Hsing-chien, drink your cup of wine
Then set it down and listen to what I say. 
Do not sigh that your home is far away;
Do not mind if your salary is small. 
Only pray that as long as life lasts,
You and I may never be forced to part.

[1] I.e., got married.

[43] THE PINE-TREES IN THE COURTYARD

[A.D. 820]

                                              Below the hall
    The pine-trees grow in front of the steps,
    Irregularly scattered,—­not in ordered lines. 
                Some are tall and some are low: 
    The tallest of them is six roods high;
                The lowest but ten feet. 
                They are like wild things
                And no one knows who planted them. 
    They touch the walls of my blue-tiled house;
    Their roots are sunk in the terrace of white sand. 
    Morning and evening they are visited by the wind and moon;
    Rain or fine,—­they are free from dust and mud. 
    In the gales of autumn they whisper a vague tune;
    From the suns of summer they yield a cool shade. 
    At the height of spring the fine evening rain
    Fills their leaves with a load of hanging pearls. 
    At the year’s end the time of great snow
    Stamps their branches with a fret of glittering jade. 
    Of the Four Seasons each has its own mood;
    Among all the trees none is like another. 
    Last year, when they heard I had bought this house,
    Neighbours mocked and the World called me mad—­
    That a whole family of twice ten souls
    Should move house for the sake of a few pines! 
    Now that I have come to them, what have they given me? 
    They have only loosened the buckles of my care. 
    Yet even so, they are “profitable friends,"[1]
    And fill my need of “converse with wise men.” 
    Yet when I consider how, still a man of the world,
    In belt and cap I scurry through dirt and dust,
    From time to time my heart twinges with shame
    That I am not fit to be master of my pines!

[1] See “Analects of Confucius” 4 and 5, where three kinds of “profitable friends” and three kinds of “profitable pleasures” are described; the third of the latter being “plenty of intelligent companions.”

[44] SLEEPING ON HORSEBACK

[A.D. 822]

    We had rode long and were still far from the inn;
    My eyes grew dim; for a moment I fell asleep. 
    Under my right arm the whip still dangled;
    In my left hand the reins for an instant slackened. 
    Suddenly I woke and turned to question my groom: 
    “We have gone a hundred paces since you fell asleep.” 
    Body and spirit for a while had exchanged place;
    Swift and slow had turned to their contraries. 
    For these few steps that my horse had carried me
    Had taken in my dream countless aeons of time! 
    True indeed is that saying of Wise Men
    “A hundred years are but a moment of sleep.”