On Dragon Hill

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

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.

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

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly, And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking. Which was the real—the butterfly or the man ? Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?

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…

Sunlight streams on the river stones. From high above, the river steadily plunges—three thousand feet of sparkling water—the Milky Way pouring down from heaven. Li T'ai-po tr.

The bright moon lifts from the Mountain of Heaven In an infinite haze of cloud and sea, And the wind, that has come a thousand miles, Beats at the Jade Pass battlements.... China marches its men down Baideng Road While Tartar…

See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven. Entering the ocean, never to return. See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers