Works

One moment I place your two bright pearls against my robe,
And the red silk mirrors a rose in each.

Why did I not meet you before I married?

See, there are two tears quivering at my lids;...

Come to me to-day wearing your green collar,
Make your two orange sleeves float in the air, and come to me.
Touch your hair with essence and colour your clothes yellow;...

It is hard for a man to tell
The hidden thought in his friend's heart,
And the thought in a man's own heart
Is a thing darker.

If you have seen a woman's heart
Bare to your eyes,...

The women who were girls a long time ago
Are sitting between the flower bushes
And speaking softly together:

"They pretend that we are old and have white hair;
They say also that our faces...

Head in hand, I look at the paper leaf;
It is still white.

I look at the ink
Dry on the end of my brush.

My soul sleeps.
Will it ever wake?
...

I sit on a white wood box
Smeared with the black name
Of a seller of white sugar.
The little brown table is so dirty
That if I had food
I do not think I could eat.
...

Clear River twists nine times about
Clear River; but so deep
That none can see the green sand.
You hear the birds about Clear River:
Dik, dik, dik, dik, Diu dik.

A little woman with jade eyes...

At the head of a thousand roaring warriors,
With the sound of gongs,
My husband has departed
Following glory.

At first I was overjoyed
To have a young girl's liberty.
...

I am in love with a child dreaming at the window.

Not for her elaborate house
On the banks of Yellow River;

But for a willow-leaf she has let fall
Into the water.
...

I still walk slowly on the river bank
Where I came singing,
And where I saw your boat pass up beyond the sun
Setting red in the river.
I want Autumn,
I want the leaves to begin falling at once,...

Here is the wind in the morning;
The kind red face of God
Is looking over the hill
We are climbing.

To-morrow we are going to marry
And work and play together,
And laugh together at things...

We have walked over the high grass under the wet trees
To the gravel path beside the lake, we two.
A noise of light-stepping shadows follows now
From the dark green mist in which we waded.
...

We were two green rushes by opposing banks,
And the small stream ran between.
Not till the water beat us down
Could we be brought together,
Not till the winter came...

Love starts with a little throb in the heart,
And in the end one dies
Like an ill-treated toy.
Love is born in a look or in four words,
The little spark that burnt the whole house....

Why are your tears so white?
Dear, I have wept so long
That my old tears grow white like my old hair.

Why are your tears so green?
Dear, the waters are wept away
And the green gall is flowing....

Winter scourges his horses
Through the North,
His hair is bitter snow
On the great wind.
The trees are weeping leaves
Because the nests are dead,
Because the flowers were nests of scent...

It rained last night,
But fair weather has come back
This morning.

The green clusters of the palm-trees
Open and begin to throw shadows.

But sorrow drifts slowly down about me.
...

The white frost covers all the arbute-trees,
Like powder on the faces of women.

Looking from window consider
That a man without women is like a flower
Naked without its leaves.
...

You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet Tamour-leng was maimed,
Going on crippled feet,
And he conquered the vast of the world.

You do not want me, Zohrah....