but is beginning ever.
Tao Yuan-ming (To-Em-Mei) (365-427)
The Unmoving Cloud1
Translated by Ezra Pound
I.
The clouds have gathered, and gathered,
and the rain falls and falls,
the eight ply of the heavens
are all folded into one darkness,
and the wide, flat road stretches out.
I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet,
I pat my new cask of wine.
My friends are estranged, or far distant,
I bow my head and stand still.
II.
Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered,
the eight ply of the heavens are darkness,
the flat land is turned into river.
“Wine, wine, here is wine!”
I drink by my eastern window.
I think of talking and man,
and no boat, no carriage, approaches.
III.
The trees in my east-looking garden
are bursting out with new twigs,
they try to stir new affection,
and men say the sun and moon keep on moving
because they can’t find a soft seat.
IV.
The birds flutter to rest in my tree,
and I think I have heard them saying,
“It is not that there are no other men
But we like this fellow the best,
But however we long to speak
He can not know of our sorrow.”
Li Po (701 – 762)
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter1
Translated from the Chinese by Ezra Pound
While my hair was still cut straight
across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
you walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
you went into far Ku-to-en,
by the river of swirling eddies,
and you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out,
by the gate now, the moss is grown,
the different mosses,
too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
over the grass in the West garden;
they hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows
of the river Kiang,
please let me know beforehand,
and I will come out to meet you
as far as Cho-fu-sa.
Omar Khayam (1044-1123)
Translated by Edward Fitzgerald
XI1
Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
a flask of wine, a book of verse—and thou
beside me singing in the wilderness—
and wilderness is paradise enow.
XXIII2
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
before we too into the dust descend;
dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end!
XXVIII3
With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,
and with my own hand labored it to grow:
and this was all the harvest that I reaped—
“I came like water, and like wind I go.”
LI1
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
Moritake (1452 – 1540)
One fallen flower2
Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson
One fallen flower
returning to the Branch? … Oh no!
A white butterfly
Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)
A Ditty3
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
by just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
there never was a better bargain driven:
my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.
My heart in me keeps him and me in one,
my heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
he loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.
Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware1
Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,
that you allow me them by so small rate?
Or do you cutted Spartans imitate?
Or do you mean my tender ears to spare
that to my questions you so total are?
When I demand of Phoenix Stella’s state,
you say, forsooth, you left her well of late:
O God, think you that satisfies my care?
I would know whether she did sit or walk;
how clothed; how waited on; sighed she or smiled;
whereof, with whom, how often did she talk;
with what pastime time’s journey she beguiled;
if her lips deigned to sweeten my poor name:
say all; and, all well said, still say the same.
Loving in Truth2
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
that She, dear She,
might take some pleasure of my pain;
pleasure might cause her read,
reading might make her know,
knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
some fresh and fruitful showers
upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;
and others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak,
and helpless in my throes,
biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.
“Fool,” said my Muse to me,
“look in thy heart, and write!”
To Sleep1
Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;
with shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
a rosy garland and a weary head:
and if these things, as being thine by right,
move not thy heavy grace, though shalt in me,
livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.
Robert Greene (1560 … 1592)
Content2
Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content;
the Quiet mind is richer than a crown;
sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
the poor estate scorns Fortune’s angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbors Quiet rest;
the cottage that affords no pride nor care;
the mean that ’grees with country music best;
the sweet consort of mirth and music’s fare;
obscured life sets down a type of bliss:
a mind content both crown and kingdom is.
Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
Love’s Farewell1
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part—
nay I have done, you get no more of me;
and I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
that thus so cleanly I myself can free;
shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
and when we meet at any time again,
be it not seen in either of our brows
that we one jot of former love retain,
now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
when his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
when faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
and innocence is closing up his eyes,
—now if though would’st when all have given him over,
from death to life though might’st him yet decover!
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
All the World’s a Stage1
All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts,
his acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
and shining morning face, creeping like snail
unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
seeking the bubble reputation
even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
in fair round belly with good capon lined,
with eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
full of wise saws and modern instances;
and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
with spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
turning again toward childish treble, pipes
and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
that ends this strange eventful history,
is second childishness and mere oblivion,
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Sonnet XVII1
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
if it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
and in fresh numbers number all your graces,
the age to come would say “this poet lies;
such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.”
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
and your true rights be termed a poet’s rage
and stretched meter of an antique song:
but were some child of yours alive that time,
you should live twice—in it, and in my rhyme.
Sonnet XVIII2
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
and summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
and often is his gold complexion dimmed,
and every fair from fair sometime declines,
by chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
but thy eternal summer shall not fade,
nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
when in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet XXXII1
If thou survive my well-contented day,
when that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover
and shall by fortune once more re-survey
these poor rude lines of thy deceasëd lover,
compare them with the bett’ring of the time,
and though they be outstripped by every pen,
reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
exceeded by the height of happier men.
O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
a dearer birth than this his love had brought,
to march in ranks of better equipage;
but since he died and poets better prove,
theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.
Sonnet LV2
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
but you shall shine more bright in these contents
than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
and broils root out the work of masonry,
nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
the living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
even in the eyes of all posterity
that wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
you live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
Sonnet CXXX1
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
coral is far more red, than her lips’ red;
if snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
but no such roses see I in her cheeks;
and in some perfumes is there more delight
than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
that music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go—
my mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground,
and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare,
as any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet CXXXVIII2
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though, I know she lies,
that she might think me some untutored youth,
unlearnëd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
although she knows my days are past the best,
simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
on both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
but wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
/>
and age in love, loves not to have years told.
therefore I lie with her and she with me,
and in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Sonnet CXLIII1
Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch
one of her feathered creatures broke away,
sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch
in pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
to follow that which flies before her face,
not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;
so runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,
whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
but if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
and play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind;
so will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’
if thou turn back and my loud crying still.
Sonnet CXLVII1
My love is as a fever, longing still,
for that which longer nurseth the disease;
feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
the uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
hath left me, and I desperate now approve
desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
and frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
my thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
at random from the truth vainly expressed;
for I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow2
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
to the last syllable of recorded time;
The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Page 4
