He Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal. Sit at the western window. Take the sun Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal, Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,...
Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane shivers and moans upon its dripping pin, ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain howls at the flues and windows to get in,...
Senlin sat before us and we heard him. He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him. Was he small, with reddish hair, Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare...
Senlin, alone before us, played a music. Was it himself he played? . . . We sat and listened, Perplexed and pleased and tired. 'Listen!' he said, 'and you will learn a secret,...
Senlin stood before us in the sunlight, And laughed, and walked away. Did no one see him leaving the doors of the city, Looking behind him, as if he wished to stay? Has no one, in the forests of the evening,...
See, as the carver carves a rose, A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye, In cruel granite, to disclose The soft things that in hardness lie, So this one, taking up his heart,...
When she came out, that white little Russian dancer, With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young, He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players, And only heard an immortal music sung,...
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night....
Over the darkened city, the city of towers, The city of a thousand gates, Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers, Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,...
Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers The golden lights go out . . . The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn, In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,...
The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city, Over the pale grey tumbled towers, And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls. Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,...
The lamplit page is turned, the dream forgotten; The music changes tone, you wake, remember Deep worlds you lived before, deep worlds hereafter Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music,...
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour: At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . . The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones....
We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence. You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .' Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,...
What shall we talk of? Li Po? Hokusai? You narrow your long dark eyes to fascinate me; You smile a little. . . .Outside, the night goes by. I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees . . ....
'This envelope you say has something in it Which once belonged to your dead son, or something He knew, was fond of? Something he remembers? The soul flies far, and we can only call it...
The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office, And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly Towards the dazzling street. Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing....
He, in the room above, grown old and tired, She, in the room below, his floor her ceiling, Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light, And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . ....
As evening falls, The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?...
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night....