No More Learning

Don't go singing the Song of the Willow Branches,[93]
When there's no one here with a heart for you to break!

[93] A plaintive love-song, to which Po Chu-i had himself written words.


DREAMING OF YUAN CH? N

This was written eight years after Yuan Ch? n's death, when Po-Chu-i
was sixty-eight.

At night you came and took my hand and we wandered together in my
dream;
When I woke in the morning there was no one to stop the tears that
fell on my handkerchief.
On the banks of the Ch'ang my aged body three times[94] has passed
through sickness;
At Hsien-yang[95] to the grasses on your grave eight times has
autumn come.
You lie buried beneath the springs and your bones are mingled with
the clay.
I--lodging in the world of men; my hair white as snow.
A-wei and Han-lang[96] both followed in their turn;
Among the shadows of the Terrace of Night did you know them or not?

[94] Since you died.

[95] Near Ch'ang-an, modern Si-ngan-fu.

[96] Affectionate names of Li Chien and Ts'ui Hsuan-liang.


A DREAM OF MOUNTAINEERING

Written when he was over seventy

At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed a mountain.
Going out alone with my staff of holly-wood.
A thousand crags, a hundred hundred valleys--
In my dream-journey none were unexplored
And all the while my feet never grew tired
And my step was as strong as in my young days.
Can it be that when the mind travels backward
The body also returns to its old state?
And can it be, as between body and soul,
That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong?
Soul and body--both are vanities:
Dreaming and waking--both alike unreal.
In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;
In the night my steps go striding over the hills.
As day and night are divided in equal parts--
Between the two, I _get_ as much as I _lose_.


EASE

Congratulating himself on the comforts of his life after his
retirement from office. Written _circa_ 844.

Lined coat, warm cap and easy felt slippers,
In the little tower, at the low window, sitting over the sunken
brazier.
Body at rest, heart at peace; no need to rise early.
I wonder if the courtiers at the Western Capital know of these
things, or not?


ON HEARING SOMEONE SING A POEM BY YUAN CH? N

Written long after Ch? n's death

No new poems his brush will trace:
Even his fame is dead.
His old poems are deep in dust
At the bottom of boxes and cupboards.
Once lately, when someone was singing,
Suddenly I heard a verse--
Before I had time to catch the words
A pain had stabbed my heart.