Of the plum-tree of this isle
Opens to-night....
Come, singing to the moon,
In the third watch.
From the Japanese of a Courtesan of Nagasaki.
In a life where the clocks
Are slow or fast,
It is a pleasant thing
To die together
As we are dying.
From the Japanese of the Wife of Bes-syo Ko-saburo Naga-haru, (sixteenth century).
I was gathering
Leaves of the
Wakana
In springtime.
Why did the snow fall
On my dress?
From the Japanese of the Mikado Ko-ko Ten-no, (ninth century).
Your arm should only be
A spring night's dream;
If I accepted it to rest my head upon
There would be rumours
And no delight.
From the Japanese of the daughter of Taira-no Tsu-gu-naka.
Was one night,
And that a night
Without much sleep,
Enough to make me love
All the life long?
From the Japanese of the wife of the Mikado Sui-toka In (twelfth century).
Let the wind's breath
Blow in the glades of the clouds
Until they close;
So that the beauty of these girls
May not escape.
From the Japanese of So-dzyo Hend-zyo
.
This night,
Long like the drooping feathers
Of the pheasant,
The chain of mountains,
Shall I sleep alone?
From the Japanese of Kaik-no Motto-no Hitomaro (seventh and eighth centuries).
Here is the wind in the morning;
The kind red face of God
Is looking over the hill
We are climbing.
To-morrow we are going to marry
And work and play together,
And laugh together at things
Which would not amuse our neighbours.
Song of Kafiristan.
Your eyes are black like water-melon pips,
Your lips are red like the red flesh of water-melons,
Your loins are smooth like smooth-rind water-melons.
You are more beautiful than my favourite among mares,
Your buttocks are sleeker and firmer,
Like her your movements are on legs of light steel.
Come and sit at my hearth, and I will celebrate your coming;
I will choose from the hundred flocks of each a hundred,
Passing at the foot of the Himalaya,
The two most silky and most beautiful great sheep.
We will go to the temple and sacrifice one of the two
To the god Pandu, that you may have many children;
And I will kill the other and roast it whole,
My most fair rose-tree serving as a spit.
I will ask the prettiest eaters and the prettiest drinkers;
And while they eat and drink greatly for three days,
I will wind silver rings upon your arms and feet
And hang a chain of river gold about your neck.
Popular Song of Kafiristan.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet
Tamour-leng
was maimed,
Going on crippled feet,
And he conquered the vast of the world.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet I have one arm to fight for you,
One arm to crush you to my rough breast,
One arm to break men for you.
It was to shield you from the Khargis
That I drag this stump in the long days.
It has been so with my women;
They would have made you a toy for heat.
After their chief with his axe once swinging
Cut my left arm, that, severed, bloody, and dead,
Yet struggled on the ground trying to guard you,
I have had pain for long in my arm that's lost.
Since the silk nets of your grape-lustrous eyes
Ensnared this heart that did not try to guard,
Ever I have a great pain in my heart that's lost.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Kazack poem of the Chief Gahuan-Beyg (1850-1885).
How can a heart play any more with life,
After it has found a woman and known tears?
In vain I shut my windows against the moonlight;
I have estranged sleep.
The flower of her face is growing in the shadow
Among warm and rustling leaves....
I see the sunlight on her house,
I see her curtains of vermilion silk....
Here is the almond-coloured dawn;
And there is dew on the petals of my night flower.
Lyric of Korea.
I dreamed that I was touching her eyelids, and I awoke
To find her sleepy temples of rose jade
For one heart-beat....
Though the moonlight beats upon the sea,
There is no boat.
Lyric of Korea.
As water runs in the river, so runs time;
And ever my eyes are wasted of her presence.
The red flowers of the second moon were yesterday;
To-day the earth has spots of blood, and there are no flowers.
The wild geese were harnessed to the autumn moon;
They have come, I heard their crying, and they are gone.
They have passed and given me no message;
I only hear the falling, falling noise of white rain.
Song of Korea.
Paradise, my darling, know that paradise,
The Prophet-given paradise after death,
Is far and very mysterious and most high;
My habits would be upset in such a place.
Without impiety, I should be mortally weary
If I went there alone, without my wife;
An ugly crowding of inferior females,
What should I do with the houris?
What should I do with those tall loaded fruit-trees,
Seeing I could not give the fruit to you?
What by the freshness of those blue streams,
Seeing my face reflected there alone?
And it might be worse if you came with me,
For all of Allah's Chosen would desire you.
And if Mahomet threw his handkerchief
And took you up and loved you for himself?
Eyes of my eyes, how could I then defend you?
I could not be at ease and watch him love you;
And if I mutinied against the Prophet,
He, being zealous to love you in his peace,
Would rise and send me hurrying
Back by the sword-blade thinness of the bridge
From paradise to earth, and in the middle
Flick me down sideways to the fires of hell.
My skin would cook and be renewed for ever
Where murderers were burning and renewing;
And evil souls, my only crime being love,
Would burn me and annoy me and destroy me.
If I were there and you in paradise,
I could not even make my prayer to Allah
That in his justice he should give me back
My paradise.
Let us love, therefore, on the earth together;
Our love is our garden, let us take great care,
Whisper and call pet names and kiss each other
To live our paradise as long as may be.
Love Ballad of Kurdistan.
Ever at the far side of the current
The fishes hurl and swim,
For pelicans and great birds
Watch and go fishing
On the bank-side.
No man dare go alone
In the dim great forest,
But if I were as strong
As the green tiger
I would go.
The holy swan on the sea
Wishes to pass over with his wings,
But I think it would be hard
To go so far.
If you are still pure,
Tell me, darling;
If you are no longer
Clear like an evening star,
You are the heart of a great tree
Eaten by insects.
Why do you lower your eyes?
Why do you not look at me?
When the blue elephant
Finds a lotus by the water-side
He takes it up and eats it.
Lemons are not sweeter than sugar.
If I had the moon at home
I would open my house wide
To the four winds of the horizon,
So that the clouds that surround her
Should escape and be shaken away.
Song of theLove Nights of Laos.
Seeing that I adore you,
Scarf of golden flowers,
Why do you stay unmarried?
As the liana at a tree's foot
That quivers to wind it round,
So do I wait for you. I pray you
Do not detest me....
I have come to say farewell.
Farewell, scarf;
Garden Royal
Where none may enter,
Gaudy money
I may not spend.
Song of theLove Nights of Laos.
Fair journey, O holy swan with gold wings;
O holy swan that I love, fair journey!
Carry this letter for me to the new land,
The place where my lover labours.
If it rains fly low beneath the trees,
If the sun is hot fly in the forest shadows;
If any ask you where you are going
Do not answer.
You who rise for so long a journey,
Avoid the roofs at the hour when the sun is red.
Carry this letter to the new land of my lover.
If he is faithful, give it to him;
If he has forgotten, read it to him only
And let the lightning burn it afterwards.
Song of theLove Nights of Laos.
If you do not want your heart
Burnt at a small flame
Like a spitted sheep,
Fly the love of women.
Fire burns what it touches,
But love burns from afar.
Folk Song of Manchuria.
It is hard for a man to tell
The hidden thought in his friend's heart,
And the thought in a man's own heart
Is a thing darker.
If you have seen a woman's heart
Bare to your eyes,
Go quickly away and never tell
What you have seen there.
Street Song of Manchuria.
The greater and the lesser ills:
He waved his grey hand wearily
Back to the anger of the sea,