Explore all content
Mooring on the Qinhuai
Mist wraps the cold water, moonlight wraps the sand; at night I moor on the Qinhuai, close by the wine houses. The singing women do not know the grief of a fallen state; across the water they are still singing 'Flowers of the Rear Courtyard.'
泊秦淮
The West Brook at Chuzhou
What I love most is the quiet grass growing by the brook, with an oriole calling above it, deep in the trees. The spring tide, bringing rain, runs fast toward evening; at the wild crossing no one is there, and the boat lies athwart of itself.
滁州西涧
The Pulley
God grants strength, beauty, wisdom, honour, and pleasure but withholds rest, so human weariness may draw people back toward the divine.
Hymn of Pan
Pan claims that his piping silenced woods, waters, insects and nymphs and drew even the gods' envy, then reports changing his tune to the pursuit of a maiden who became a reed, a loss at which all his hearers wept.
Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Addressing dead poets who left their souls on earth, the poem imagines their other souls conversing among Elysian lawns, rose-scented daisies and a nightingale that sings divine truth, then turns back to the earthly works that still teach the living about sorrow, passion, glory and shame.
PASSIONS are liken’d best to floods and streams
A six-line epigram likens passions to water, holding that shallow streams murmur while deep ones are silent, and concludes that those rich in words are poor in what makes a lover.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
A shepherd promises fields, flowers, fine clothes, music, and May dances to persuade his beloved to share an ideal pastoral life.
Love
The song asks where fancy is bred, answers that it is engendered in the eyes and fed with gazing, and rings its knell as it dies in the cradle where it lies.
Love
Love welcomes a guest who draws back as unworthy, and answers each objection in turn until the guest agrees to sit down and eat.
Hymn to Diana
A hymn asks the huntress-goddess to keep her state now the sun has set, forbids the earth's shade to interpose, and asks her to lay bow and quiver aside and give the hunted hart space to breathe.
To Althea, from Prison
Prison bars cannot confine love, fellowship, song, or a quiet conscience; the poem also binds inward freedom to declared loyalty to the king.
Mary Morison
The speaker asks Mary to come to her window at the appointed hour, recalls sitting at a lighted dance seeing and hearing nothing because she was not there, and finally asks for her love or at least her pity.
The Funeral Rites of the Rose
A rose sickens and dies, and the other flowers wash, mourn, sing a dirge over her and finally wrap her in a linen shroud as in a tomb.
Jean
Of all the directions the wind can blow the speaker prefers the west, where the lass he loves best lives beyond wild woods, rivers and many a hill, and he says that every bonnie flower that springs and every bonnie bird that sings puts him in mind of his Jean.
Sweet-and-Twenty
A singer asks his roaming mistress to stay and hear her true love, then argues that mirth and kisses belong to the present because what is to come is unsure and youth will not endure.
A Birthday
The speaker likens a heart at the coming of love to a singing bird, a fruit-laden apple tree and a rainbow shell on a calm sea, then calls for a dais worked in silk, gold, doves and pomegranates because this day is the birthday of a life.
Climbing the Leyou Plateau
Toward evening my mood is out of sorts; I drive the carriage up to the ancient plain. The setting sun is boundlessly fine— it is only that dusk is near.
登乐游原
On the Stork Tower
The white sun sinks behind the hills; the Yellow River flows toward the sea. To take in a thousand miles of view, climb one level higher.
登鹳雀楼
Bermudas
A boat rowing past the remote Bermudas is overheard singing praise to the God who led them there, stocked the island with oranges, pomegranates, figs and cedars, and framed a temple in the rocks, while the oars keep time to the song.
An Autumn Evening
Silver candle, autumn light, a painted screen turned cold; a small gauze fan swats at drifting fireflies. On the steps the night air is cool as water; sitting, watching the Herdboy and Weaver Maid stars.
秋夕
To Autumn
Autumn appears through ripening, harvest, and approaching dusk, heard on its own terms rather than measured against spring.
Bamboo Lodge
Alone I sit deep in the shaded bamboo, playing the zither and then whistling long. Deep in the wood no one knows of it— the bright moon comes and shines on me.
竹里馆
Discipline
The speaker repeatedly asks God to throw away rod and wrath, pleads a willing though stumbling obedience, and argues that love, armed like an archer, will do what anger cannot.
Simplex Munditiis
The speaker distrusts a lady kept perpetually dressed, powdered and perfumed, and asks instead for loose robes and free hair, since studied art strikes the eyes but not the heart.