Allen Upward
The aged man, when he beheld winter approaching, counted the leaves as they lapsed from the acacia trees; while his son was talking of the spring.
Meditating on the glory of illustrious lineage I lifted up my eyes and beheld the bitter purple willows growing round the tombs of the exalted Mings.
THE CORAL FISHER
The coral fisher, who had been a long time beneath the water, rose to the surface with nothing in his hand but a spray of crimson seaweed. In answer to the master of the junk he said, “While I was in the world of fishes this miserable weed appeared to me more beautiful than coral.”
The poet Wong, after he had delighted a company of mandarins at a feast, sat silent in the midst of his household. He explained, “The diamond sparkles only when it is in the light.”
Some one complained to the Master, “After many lessons I do not fully understand your doctrine.” In response the Master pointed to the tide in the mouth of the river, and asked, “How wide is the sea in this place?”
A poet, having taken the bridle off his tongue, spoke thus: “More fragrant than the heliotrope, which blooms all the year round, better than vermilion letters on tablets of sendal, are thy kisses, thou shy one!”
I have heard that a certain princess, when she found that she had been married by a demon, wove a wreath of jonquils and sent it to the lover of former days.
Even as the seed of the marigold, carried by the wind, lodges on the roofs of palaces, and lights the air with flame-colored blossoms, so may the child-like words of the insignificant poet confer honor on lofty and disdainful mandarins.
THE MERMAID
The sailor boy who leant over the side of the Junk of Many Pearls, and combed the green tresses of the sea with his ivory fingers, believing that he had heard the voice of a mermaid, cast his body down between the waves.
The emperors of fourteen dynasties, clad in robes of yellow silk embroidered with the Dragon, wearing gold diadems set with pearls and rubies, and seated on thrones of incomparable ivory, have ruled over the Middle Kingdom for four thousand years.
My mother taught me that every night a procession of junks carrying lanterns moves silently across the sky, and the water sprinkled from their paddles falls to the earth in the form of dew. I no longer believe that the stars are junks carrying lanterns, no longer that the dew is shaken from their oars.
The child who threw away leaf after leaf of the many-coated onion, to get to the sweet heart, found in the end that he had thrown away the heart itself.
To the passionate lover, whose sighs come back to him on every breeze, all the world is like a murmuring sea-shell.
A kite, while devouring a skylark, complained, “Had I known that thy flesh was no sweeter than that of a sparrow I should have listened longer to thy delicious notes.”
THE WINDMILL
The exquisite painter Ko-tsu was often reproached by an industrious friend for his fits of idleness. At last he excused himself by saying, “You are a watermill—a windmill can grind only when the wind blows.”
The first time the emperor Han heard a certain Word he said, “It is strange.” The second time he said, “It is divine.” The third time he said, “Let the speaker be put to death.”