From Personae
THE ALTAR
Let us build here an exquisite friendship,
The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love
Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder;
Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy.
|
Personae
, , ,
,
.
|
ON HIS OWN FACE IN A GLASS
O strange face there in the glass!
O ribald company, O saintly host,
O sorrow-swept my fool,
What answer? O you myriad
That strive and play and pass,
Jest, challenge, counterlie!
I? I? I?
And you?
|
!
, ,
, ,
? , ,
, ,
, , !
? ? ?
?
|
From Lustra
DANCE FIGURE
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee
Dark eyed,
O woman of my dreams,
Ivory sandaled,
There is none like thee among the dancers,
None with swift feet.
I have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;
Thy face as a river with lights.
White as an almond are thy shoulders;
As new almonds stripped from the husk.
They guard thee not with eunuchs;
Not with bars of copper.
Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven
in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,
O Nathat-Ikanaie, Tree-at-the-river.
As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;
Thy fingers a frosted stream.
Thy maidens are white like pebbles;
Their music about thee!
There is none like thee among the dancers;
None with swift feet.
|
Lustra
,
,
,
,
, .
,
.
,
.
,
.
,
.
,
.
.
,
-, .
, ;
.
, ,
.
,
, .
|
APRIL
Nympharum membra disjecta
Three spirits came to me
And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground:
Pale carnage beneath bright mist.
|
Nimpharum membra disjecta
,
,
:
.
|
FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions,
Let us express our envy of the man with a steady job
and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs.
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about in the streets,
You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all.
You do not even express our inner nobilities,
You will come to a very bad end.
And I?
I have gone half cracked,
I have talked to you so much that
I almost see you about me,
Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of clothing!
But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much mischief,
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons worked upon it,
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
Prom the statue of the infant Christ in Santa Maria Novella,
Lest they say we are lacking in taste,
Or that there is no caste in this family.
|
, , ,
, , .
, , ,
, .
,
,
.
,
.
?
,
,
, !..
, ,
, .
,
, ,
,
.
, ,
, , .
|
A SONG OF THE DEGREES
I
Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.
II
The wind moves above the wheat
With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.
I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place,
The hall of clear colours.
III
O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours!
O light bound and bent in, O soul of the captive,
Why am I warned? Why am I sent away?
Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold!
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence!
|
I
,
, .
II
,
.
,
, .
,
.
III
, , !
, , ,
? ?
?
, , , , !
!
|
CODA
O my songs,
Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people's
faces,
Will you find your lost dead among them?
|
CODA
,
,
?
|
LIU CH'E
The rustling of the silk is discontinued,
Dust drifts over the court-yard,
There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves
Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:
A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
|
,
.
,
,
, , :
.
|
FAN-PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD
O fan of white silk, clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.
|
, ,
,
.
|
IONE, DEAD THE LONG YEAR
Empty are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land
And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads.
They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land
Where Ione
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a person just gone.
|
, Ļ
,
,
.
,
- , ,
, .
|
EPITAPHS
Fu I
Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill,
Alas, he died of alcohol.
Li Po
And Li Po also died drunk.
He tried to embrace a moon
In the Yellow River.
|
,
.
.
|
ANCIENT WISDOM, RATHER COSMIC
Guang-Tzu dreamed,
And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee and
a butterfly,
He was uncertain why he should try to feel like
anything else,
Hence his contentment.
|
, ,
- ,
, ,
,
, - ,
.
|
From Lustra
(1915)
ALBA from LANGUE D'OC
When the nightingale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
Light
And the night
Flies.
|
Lustra
(1915)
ALBA LANGUE D'OC
, ,
,
:
, ! !
.
|
TROY
Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,
And your barbecues of great oxen,
And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes,
With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes?
Where is the work of your home-born sculptors?
Time's tooth is into the lot, and war's and fate's too.
Envy has taken your all,
Save your douth and your story.
|
, , ,
,
,
?
?..
, , .
,
.
|
MEDALLION
Luini in porcelain!
The grand piano
Utters a profane
Protest with her clear soprano.
The sleek head emerges
From the gold-yellow frock
As Anadyomene in the opening
Pages of Reinach.
Honey-red, closing the face-oval,
A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were
Spun in King Minos' hall
From metal, or intractable amber;
The face-oval beneath the glaze,
Bright in its suave bounding-line, as,
Beneath half-watt rays,
The eyes turn topaz.
|
!
.
- ,
.
-
,
.
,
.
|
From Cathay
THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER
From Rihaku
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about 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 look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, 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, 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.
|
Cathay
:
, ,
,
, .
,
, .
, .
, ,
:
, , .
.
, ,
, .
.
,
--, ,
.
.
, .
, ,
!
.
, , ;
. .
,
,
--.
|
TAKING LEAVE OF A FRIEND
From Rihaku
Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.
Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing.
|
, ,
, ;
.
, ,
, ,
, , .
, .
|
SEPARATION ON THE RIVER KIANG
From Rihaku
Ko-Jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro,
The smoke-flowers are blurred over the river.
His lone sail blots the far sky.
And now I see only the river,
The long Kiang, reaching heaven.
|
- , --,
.
,
, .
|
From Cantos
CANTO XLVII
Who even dead, yet hath his mind entire!
This sound came in the dark
First must thou go the road
to hell
And to the bower of Ceres' daughter Proserpine,
Through overhanging dark, to see Tiresias,
Eyeless that was, a shade, that is in hell
So full of knowing that the beefy men know less than
he,
Ere thou come to thy road's end.
Knowledge the shade of a shade,
Yet must thou sail after knowledge
Knowing less than drugged beasts. phtheggometha
thasson
The small lamps drift in the bay
And the sea's claw gathers them.
Neptunus drinks after neap-tide.
Tamuz! Tamuz!!
The red flame going seaward.
By this gate art thou measured.
From the long boats they have set lights in the water,
The sea's claw gathers them outward.
Scilla's dogs snarl at the cliff's base,
The white teeth gnaw in under the crag,
But in the pale night the small lamps float seaward
 - TU DIONA
KAI MOIRAI' ADONIN
The sea is streaked red with Adonis,
The lights flicker red in small jars.
Wheat shoots rise new by the altar,
flower from the swift seed
Two span, two span to a woman,
Beyond that she believes not. Nothing is of any importance.
To that is she bent, her intention
To that art thou called ever turning intention,
Whether by night the owl-call, whether by sap in shoot,
Never idle, by no means by no wiles intermittent
Moth is called over mountain
The bull runs blind on the sword, naturans
To the cave art thou called, Odysseus,
By Molu hast thou respite for a little,
By Molu art thou freed from the one bed
that thou may'st return to another
The stars are not in her counting,
To her they are but wandering holes.
Begin thy plowing
When the Pleiades go down to their rest,
Begin thy plowing
40 days are they under seabord,
Thus do in fields by seabord
And in valleys winding down toward the sea.
When the cranes fly high
think of plowing.
By this gate art thou measured
Thy day is between a door and a door
Two oxen are yoked for plowing
Or six in the hill field
White bulk under olives, a score for drawing down stone,
Here the mules are gabled with slate on the hill road.
Thus was it in time.
And the small stars now fall from the olive branch,
Forked shadow falls dark on the terrace
More black than the floating martin
that has no care for your presence,
His wing-print is black on the roof tiles
And the print is gone with his cry.
So light is thy weight on Tellus
Thy notch no deeper indented
Thy weight less than the shadow
Yet hast thou gnawed through the mountain,
Scylla's white teeth less sharp.
Hast thou found a nest softer than cunnus
Or hast thou found better rest
Hast'ou a deeper planting, doth thy death year
Bring swifter shoot?
Hast thou entered more deeply the mountain?
The light has entered the cave. Io! Io!
The light has gone down into the cave,
Splendour on splendour!
By prong have I entered these hills:
That the grass grow from my body,
That I hear the roots speaking together,
The air is new on my leaf,
The forked boughs shake with the wind.
Is Zephyrus more light on the bough, Apeliota
more light on the almond branch?
By this door have I entered the hill.
Falleth,
Adanis falleth.
Fruit cometh after. The small lights drift out with the
tide,
sea's claw has gathered them outward,
Four banners to every flower
The sea's claw draws the lamps outward.
Think thus of thy plowing
When the seven stars go down to their rest
Forty days for their rest, by seabord
And in valleys that wind down toward the sea
- KAI MOIRAI T' ADONIN
When the almond bough puts forth its flame,
When the new shoots are brought to the altar,
 - TU DIONA, KAI MOIRAI
KAI MOIRAI T' ADONIN
that hath the gift of healing,
that hath the power over wild beasts.
|
Cantos
CANTO XLVII
, , !
, ,
, ,
, , ,
, ,
.
,
. phtheggometha
thasson
.
.
! !!
.
.
,
.
,
,
'
,
.
, .
, ,
.
.
,
, ,
,
,
,
,
, naturans
, ,
,
, ,
.
,
40 ,
,
, .
.
,
.
.
,
,
, ,
,
, .
.
,
,
,
?
?
. ! !
,
!
.
,
,
,
.
,
?
.
.
.
,
.
,
,
- '
,
,
- ,
'
,
.
|