Li Po

As down Mount Emerald at eve I came,
The mountain moon went all the way with me.
Backward I looked, to see the heights aflame
With a pale light that glimmered eerily.

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head.

A pity it is evening, yetI do love the water of this springseeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making itone with those who travelthe roads;
I turn and facethe moon; sing it a song,…

I came here a wandererthinking of home,
remembering my far away Ch'ang-an.
And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavillion,
I heard a beautiful bamboo fluteplay "Falling Plum Blossoms."It was late spring in a city by the…

When first my hair began to cover my forehead,
I picked and played with flowers before the gate.
You came riding on a bamboo horse,
And circled the walkway, playing with green plums.

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.

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

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 took leave of you, old friend, at
Yellow Crane Pavilion;
In the mist and bloom of March, you wentdown to Yang-chou:
A lonely sail, distant shades, extinguished by blue—There, at the horizon, where river meets sky.

A slip of the moon hangs over the capital;
Ten thousand washing-mallets are pounding;
And the autumn wind is blowing my heart For ever and ever toward the Jade Pass....
Oh, when will the Tartar troops be conquered

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

Yellow clouds beside the walls; crows near the tower.
Flying back, they caw, caw; calling in the boughs.
In the loom she weaves brocade, the Qin river girl.
Made of emerald yarn like mist, the window hides her words.

I love Master Meng.
Free as a flowing breeze,
He is
Throughout the world.

When I was a boy I called the moon awhite plate of jade, sometimes it lookedlike a great mirror hanging in the sky,
first came the two legs of the fairyand the cassia tree, but for whom the rabbitkept on pounding medical herbs,
Ijust…

Drunk on Dragon Hill tonight,
the banished immortal,
Great White,
turns among yellow flowers

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…

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?

As the two of us drinktogether, while mountainflowers blossom beside, wedown one cup after the otheruntil I am drunk and sleepyso that you better go!
Tomorrow if you feel like itdo come and bring your lutealong with you!

You ask for what reason I stay on the green mountain,
I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.
Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,
Apart

Clouds bring back to mind her dress, the flowers her face.
Winds of spring caress the rail where sparkling dew-drops cluster.
If you cannot see her by the jewelled mountain top,
Maybe on the moonlit Jasper Terrance you will meet her.

To drown the ancient sorrows,
we drank a hundred jugs of winethere in the beautiful night.
We couldn't go to bed with the moon so bright.
The finally the wine overcame usand we lay down on the empty mountain—the earth for a…

There was wine in a cup of goldand a girl of fifteen from Wu,
her eyebrows painted darkand with slippers of red brocade.
If her conversation was poor,
how beautifully she could sing!

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

The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.