Farewell to Meng Hao-jan

You ask how I spend my time—I nestle against a treetrunkand listen to autumn windsin the pines all night and day. Shantung wine can't get me drunk. The local poets bore me. My thoughts remain with you

Mountain flowers open in our faces. You and I are triply lost in wine. I’m drunk, my friend, sleepy. Rise and go.

Misted the flowers weep as light Moon of white silk sleeplessly cries. Stilled - Phoenix wings. Touched - Mandarin strings.

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped; The colours of Spring teem on every side. With leaping fish the blue pond is full; With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.

Amongst the grandeur of Hua ShanI climb to the Flower Peak, and fancy I see fairies and immortalscarrying lotus in theirsacred white hands, robes flowingthey fly filling the sky with colouras they rise to the palace of heaven, inviting me…

I sat drinking and did not notice the dusk, Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress. Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream; The birds were gone, and men also few.

Amongst bubbling streamsa dog barks; peach blossomis heavy with dew; hereand there a deer canbe seen in forest glades! No sound of the mid-daybell enters this fastnesswhere blue mist risesfrom bamboo groves; down from a high peakhangs a…

The old gardens of Kusu Terraceare a wilderness, yet the willowsthat remain still put out new branches; lasses gathering water chestnutssing so loudly and with suchclarity, that the feeling of springreturns to us; but where once stoodthe…