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On Salathiel Pavy
An epitaph asks readers to weep for a boy of scarcely thirteen who had already spent three years as the stage's finest performer, and claims that the Fates, deceived by how truly he played old men, took him by mistake and now cannot get him back from Heaven.
We’ll go no more a-roving
The speakers still feel love and brightness, yet accept that the heart, sword, and soul must rest and that their nightly roaming must pause.
My Bonnie Mary
Before boarding, the speaker calls for wine in a silver cup to drink a toast to his love, then says that neither the roar of sea and shore nor the noise of war, but only leaving her, makes parting hard.
SHALL I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
The speaker asks whether to compare the beloved to a summer day, finds the beloved more lovely and temperate than summer’s brief and changeable beauty, and promises that these enduring lines will preserve that beauty and life as long as people can breathe or see.
The Primrose
In two matched stanzas of question and answer, the speaker explains that he sends a dew-covered primrose because love's sweets are mixed with tears, and that the flower's sickly colour and bending stalk show a lover's fainting hopes.
From the Arabic
The speaker's spirit, sitting in the light of the beloved's looks, is left behind when a swift horse carries the beloved away, and he sends his heart—faster than storm or steed—to keep company through battle, darkness and need without claiming one smile in return.
Dirge
A speaker who says he has been slain by a cruel beloved calls on death to come, orders his own shroud and coffin, and asks to be buried where no flower, friend or grieving lover can ever find the grave.
Cradle Song
A lullaby over a sleeping infant traces soft desires, secret smiles and morning-like smiles stealing over its face, then turns to the cunning wiles creeping in the sleeping heart and warns that when that heart wakes a dreadful night will break.
Departing Baidi City at Dawn
At dawn I leave Baidi amid rose-tinted clouds; a thousand li to Jiangling, returned in a single day. Gibbons call without cease from both banks, while my light boat has already passed ten thousand mountains.
早发白帝城
Auld Lang Syne
In Scots, old friends raise a cup to shared youth while acknowledging the weary years and roaring seas that have divided them.
Spring Morning
In spring sleep, dawn arrives unnoticed; everywhere, I hear birds calling. Through the night came the sound of wind and rain— how many blossoms must have fallen?
春晓
Drinking Alone under the Moon I
Among the flowers, a jug of wine; I drink alone, with no companion near. I raise my cup and invite the bright moon— with my shadow, we become three.
月下独酌·其一
It was a Lover and his Lass
Across four refrain-bound stanzas, a pair of lovers crossing the green corn-fields and rye is described singing a carol that life is but a flower and that the present time should be taken.
The Banks o’ Doon
Standing by the flowering banks of Doon, the speaker reproaches the blossom and the singing bird for their brightness, recalls roving there when every bird sang of its love, and ends with a false lover who stole the rose and left the thorn.
COME unto these yellow sands
A singer calls dancers to take hands and foot it on the sands while the waves fall silent, then breaks off to listen to barking watch-dogs and a crowing cock.
Gratiana Dancing
The dancer's steps raise the floor she treads into a firmament bearing her like a heaven, and each step both binds her watchers' hopes and, when she stops, leaves the floor paved with broken hearts.
The Dream
Woken from a dream of the beloved by her actual arrival, the speaker says she continued rather than broke the dream, takes her at first for an angel, and then doubts her as she rises to leave.
Cherry-Ripe
A street vendor's cry is turned into a compliment: asked where the cherries grow, the speaker answers that they grow where Julia's lips smile, an isle bearing fruit all year.
Song
A list of impossible errands—catching a falling star, hearing mermaids sing—leads to the claim that no woman is both true and fair, and that even one reported as true would have turned false before the speaker could reach her.
Song
A speaker whose finery and smiles have been driven off by love asks for an axe, a spade and a winding-sheet, and says that once the grave is made he will lie down as cold as clay, with the verdict that true love passes away.
Song
Speaking to a lover about their own death, the speaker asks for no sad songs, roses or cypress but only green grass wet with showers and dew, and imagines a twilight afterwards in which they may equally happen to remember or to forget.
Death
The speaker defies personified Death as a servant of fate and chance, ending with the paradox that death itself will die.
Daffodils
A field of daffodils returns to the solitary mind after the encounter, showing how remembered beauty can continue to nourish feeling.
River Snow
Across a thousand mountains, no bird is in flight; on ten thousand paths, no human trace remains. In a lone boat, an old man in straw cape and hat fishes alone in the snow on the cold river.
江雪