* * * * *

Where to-night she lies none can give us news;
Nor any knows, save the bright watching moon.

[50] THE GRAND HOUSES AT LO-YANG

[Circa A.D. 829]

    By woods and water, whose houses are these
    With high gates and wide-stretching lands? 
    From their blue gables gilded fishes hang;
    By their red pillars carven coursers run. 
    Their spring arbours, warm with caged mist;
    Their autumn yards with locked moonlight cold. 
    To the stem of the pine-tree amber beads cling;
    The bamboo-branches ooze ruby-drops. 
    Of lake and terrace who may the masters be? 
    Staff-officers, Councillors-of-State. 
    All their lives they have never come to see,
    But know their houses only from the bailiff’s map!

[51] THE CRANES

[A.D. 830]

    The western wind has blown but a few days;
    Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough. 
    On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes;
    In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat. 
    Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away;
    Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light. 
    In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
    The garden-boy is leading the cranes home.

[52] ON HIS BALDNESS

[A.D. 832]

At dawn I sighed to see my hairs fall;
At dusk I sighed to see my hairs fall. 
For I dreaded the time when the last lock should go ... 
They are all gone and I do not mind at all! 
I have done with that cumbrous washing and getting dry;
My tiresome comb for ever is laid aside. 
Best of all, when the weather is hot and wet,
To have no top-knot weighing down on one’s head! 
I put aside my dusty conical cap;
And loose my collar-fringe. 
In a silver jar I have stored a cold stream;
On my bald pate I trickle a ladle-full. 
Like one baptized with the Water of Buddha’s Law,
I sit and receive this cool, cleansing joy.
Now I know why the priest who seeks Repose
Frees his heart by first shaving his head.

[53] THINKING OF THE PAST

[A.D. 833]

    In an idle hour I thought of former days;
    And former friends seemed to be standing in the room. 
    And then I wondered “Where are they now?”
    Like fallen leaves they have tumbled to the Nether Springs. 
    Han Yuu[1] swallowed his sulphur pills,
    Yet a single illness carried him straight to the grave. 
    Yuuan Chen1 smelted autumn stone[2]
    But before he was old, his strength crumbled away. 
    Master Tu possessed the “Secret of Health”: 
    All day long he fasted from meat and spice. 
    The Lord Ts`ui, trusting a strong drug,
    Through the whole winter wore his summer coat. 
    Yet some by illness and some by sudden death ... 
    All vanished ere their middle years were passed.