No More Learning

ON BOARD SHIP: READING YUAN CH? N'S POEMS

I take your poems in my hand and read them beside the candle;
The poems are finished: the candle is low: dawn not yet come.
With sore eyes by the guttering candle still I sit in the dark,
Listening to waves that, driven by the wind, strike the prow of
the ship.


ARRIVING AT HSUN-YANG

(TWO POEMS)

(1)

A bend of the river brings into view two triumphal arches;
That is the gate in the western wall of the suburbs of Hsun-yang.
I have still to travel in my solitary boat three or four leagues--
By misty waters and rainy sands, while the yellow dusk thickens.

(2)

We are almost come to Hsun-yang: how my thoughts are stirred
As we pass to the south of Yu Liang's[74] tower and the east of
P'? n Port.
The forest trees are leafless and withered,--after the mountain
rain;
The roofs of the houses are hidden low among the river mists.
The horses, fed on water grass, are too weak to carry their load;
The cottage walls of wattle and thatch let the wind blow on one's
bed.
In the distance I see red-wheeled coaches driving from the town-gate;
They have taken the trouble, these civil people, to meet their new
Prefect!

[74] Died A. D. 340. Giles, 2526.


MADLY SINGING IN THE MOUNTAINS

There is no one among men that has not a special failing:
And my failing consists in writing verses.
I have broken away from the thousand ties of life:
But this infirmity still remains behind.
Each time that I look at a fine landscape:
Each time that I meet a loved friend,
I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry
And am glad as though a God had crossed my path.
Ever since the day I was banished to Hsun-yang
Half my time I have lived among the hills.
And often, when I have finished a new poem,
Alone I climb the road to the Eastern Rock.
I lean my body on the banks of white stone:
I pull down with my hands a green cassia branch.
My mad singing startles the valleys and hills:
The apes and birds all come to peep.
Fearing to become a laughing-stock to the world,
I choose a place that is unfrequented by men.


RELEASING A MIGRANT "YEN" (WILD GOOSE)

At Nine Rivers,[75] in the tenth year,[76] in winter,--heavy snow;
The river-water covered with ice and the forests broken with their
load. [77]
The birds of the air, hungry and cold, went flying east and west;
And with them flew a migrant "yen," loudly clamouring for food.
Among the snow it pecked for grass; and rested on the surface of the
ice:
It tried with its wings to scale the sky; but its tired flight was
slow.
The boys of the river spread a net and caught the bird as it flew;
They took it in their hands to the city-market and sold it there
alive.
I that was once a man of the North am now an exile here:
Bird and man, in their different kind, are each strangers in the
south.
And because the sight of an exiled bird wounded an exile's heart,
I paid your ransom and set you free, and you flew away to the clouds.
Yen, Yen, flying to the clouds, tell me, whither shall you go?
Of all things I bid you, do not fly to the land of the north-west
In Huai-hsi there are rebel bands[78] that have not been subdued;
And a thousand thousand armoured men have long been camped in war.
The official army and the rebel army have grown old in their opposite
trenches;
The soldier's rations have grown so small, they'll be glad of even
you.