No More Learning

Above, a mountain ten thousand feet high:
Below, a river a thousand fathoms deep.
A strip of green, walled by cliffs of stone:
Wide enough for the passage of a single reed. [82]
At Chu-t'ang a straight cleft yawns:
At Yen-yu islands block the stream.
Long before night the walls are black with dusk;
Without wind white waves rise.
The big rocks are like a flat sword:
The little rocks resemble ivory tusks.

[82] See Odes, v, 7.

* * * * *

We are stuck fast and cannot move a step.
How much the less, three hundred miles? [83]
Frail and slender, the twisted-bamboo rope:
Weak, the dangerous hold of the towers' feet.
A single slip--the whole convoy lost:
And _my_ life hangs on _this_ thread!
I have heard a saying "He that has an upright heart
Shall walk scathless through the lands of Man and Mo. "[84]
How can I believe that since the world began
In every shipwreck none have drowned but rogues?
And how can I, born in evil days[85]
And fresh from failure,[86] ask a kindness of Fate?
Often I fear that these un-talented limbs
Will be laid at last in an un-named grave!

[83] The distance to Chung-chou.
[84] Dangerous savages.

[85] Of civil war.

[86] Alluding to his renewed banishment.


ON BEING REMOVED FROM HSUN-YANG AND SENT TO CHUNG-CHOU

A remote place in the mountains of Pa (Ssech'uan)

Before this, when I was stationed at Hsun-yang,
Already I regretted the fewness of friends and guests.
Suddenly, suddenly,--bearing a stricken heart
I left the gates, with nothing to comfort me.
Henceforward,--relegated to deep seclusion
In a bottomless gorge, flanked by precipitous mountains,
Five months on end the passage of boats is stopped
By the piled billows that toss and leap like colts.
The inhabitants of Pa resemble wild apes;
Fierce and lusty, they fill the mountains and prairies.
Among such as these I cannot hope for friends
And am pleased with anyone who is even remotely human!


PLANTING FLOWERS ON THE EASTERN EMBANKMENT

Written when Governor of Chung-Chou

I took money and bought flowering trees
And planted them out on the bank to the east of the Keep.
I simply bought whatever had most blooms,
Not caring whether peach, apricot, or plum.
A hundred fruits, all mixed up together;
A thousand branches, flowering in due rotation.
Each has its season coming early or late;
But to all alike the fertile soil is kind.
The red flowers hang like a heavy mist;
The white flowers gleam like a fall of snow.
The wandering bees cannot bear to leave them;
The sweet birds also come there to roost.
In front there flows an ever-running stream;
Beneath there is built a little flat terrace.
Sometimes I sweep the flagstones of the terrace;
Sometimes, in the wind, I raise my cup and drink.