It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano
Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord,
And the universe is suddenly agitated,
And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword.
Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken,
The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble.
The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation;
And I, too, will dissemble.
Yet it is sorrow has found my heart,
Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death;
And pain twirls slowly among the trees.
The street-piano revolves its glittering music,
The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn,
Memory’s knives are in this sunlit silence,
They ripple and lazily burn.
The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,
It does not move; my trowel taps a stone,
The sweet note wavers amid derisive music...

Yea, she hath looked Truth grimly face to face,
    And drained unto the lees the proffered cup.
This silence is not patience, nor the grace
    Of recognition, meekly offered up,
But mere acceptance fraught with keenest pain,
Seeing that all her struggles must be vain.


Her future clear and terrible outlies, -
    This burden to be borne through all her days,
This crown of thorns pressed down above her eyes,
    This weight of trouble she may never raise.
No reconcilement doth she ask nor wait;
Knowing such things are, she endures her fate.


No brave endeavor of the broken will
    To cling to such poor stays as will abide
(Although the waves be wild and angry still)
    After the lapsing of the swollen tide.
No fear of further loss, no ...

        Why do we pity those who weep? The pain
    That finds a ready outlet in the flow
    Of salt and bitter tears is blessed woe,
        And does not need our sympathies. The rain
        But fits the shorn field for new yield of grain;
    While the red, brazen skies, the sun's fierce glow,
    The dry, hot winds that from the tropics blow
        Do parch and wither the unsheltered plain.
        The anguish that through long, remorseless years
    Looks out upon the world with no relief
        Of sudden tempests or slow-dripping tears -
    The still, unuttered, silent, wordless grief
        That evermore doth ache, and ache, and ache -
        This is the sorrow wherewith hearts do break.

She sleeps and I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
In the sunlight of brighter and happier days,
As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.
She sleeps and will waken to bless me no more;
Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,
And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yore
Has fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.

I had thought in this life not to travel alone,
I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow
But the face of my idol is colder than stone,
And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.
I was hoping to bask in the light of her smile
When Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown’d me
But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,
And the thorns of affliction...

        There is a haunting phantom called Regret,
    A shadowy creature robed somewhat like Woe,
    But fairer in the face, whom all men know
        By her sad mien and eyes forever wet.
        No heart would seek her; but once having met,
    All take her by the hand, and to and fro
    They wander through those paths of long ago -
        Those hallowed ways 'twere wiser to forget.

        One day she led me to that lost land's gate
    And bade me enter; but I answered "No!
        I will pass on with my bold comrade, Fate;
    I have no tears to waste on thee - no time;
    My strength I hoard for heights I hope to climb:
        No friend art thou for souls that would be great."

The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year's end.

Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore it has to be.

Only after the dark, wet days
Do we fully rejoice in the sun's bright rays.

Sweeter the crust tastes after the fast
Than the sated gourmand's finest repast.

The faintest cheer sounds never amiss
To the actor who once has heard a hiss.

To one who the sadness of freedom knows,
Light seem the fetters love may impose.

And he who has dwelt with his heart alone,
Hears all the music in friendship's tone.

So better and better I comprehend
How sorrow ever would be our friend.

There’s music wafting on the air,
The evening winds are sighing
Among the trees and yonder stream
Is mournfully replying,
Lamenting loud the sunny light
That in the west is dying.

The moon is rising o’er the hill,
Her slanting rays are creeping
Where Nature lies profoundly still
In happy quiet sleeping,
And resting on her face, they’ll find
The earth is wet with weeping.

She mourneth for the lovely day,
Now deep in darkness shaded;
She sheds the dewy tear because
Of morning’s mantle faded;
She misses from her breast the garb
In which the moon array’d it.

The evening queen will strive in vain
To break the spell which bound her;
A million stars can never throw
Departed warmth around her;
They all must pass away and...

Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge,
    Reddening the road and deepening the green
On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge;
    Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between
    These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen
But dimly on the far horizon's edge.


In these transparent-clouded, gentle skies,
    Wherethrough the moist beams of the soft June sun
Might any moment break, no sorrow lies,
    No note of grief in swollen brooks that run,
    No hint of woe in this subdued, calm tone
Of all the prospect unto dreamy eyes.


Only a tender, unnamed half-regret
    For the lost beauty of the gracious morn;
A yearning aspiration, fainter yet,
    For brighter suns in joyous days unborn,
    Now while brief showers ...

When the twilight shadows deepen and the far-off lands are dim,
And the vesper dirge is stealing like the chant of cherubim,
There's a prayer within my bosom that's responsive to the sound,
There's a thought that springs within me--but 'tis sad and silence-bound.

There's a sorrow in those shadows as they lengthen on the lawn,
For the joy of life has vanished and its sweetness--all is gone,
And the purple mists of even as they hover o'er the glade
Seem to hush in voiceless gloom the deep recesses of the shade.

Oh thou beyond those heathery hills, beyond those woodlands blue,
Which, as they meet the eastern sky, receive its azure hue,
Ah, must I lonely linger here, where nought but griefs await,
Where life is but one long, long sigh, and all disconsolate?

I'm weep...

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end:
She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image was there;
She has gone weeping away.

The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year's end.

Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore it has to be.

Only after the dark, wet days
Do we fully rejoice in the sun's bright rays.

Sweeter the crust tastes after the fast
Than the sated gourmand's finest repast.

The faintest cheer sounds never amiss
To the actor who once has heard a hiss.

To one who the sadness of freedom knows,
Light seem the fetters love may impose.

And he who has dwelt with his heart alone,
Hears all the music in friendship's tone.

So better and better I comprehend,
How sorrow ever would be our friend.

There is a sorrow in the wind to-night
That haunteth me; she, like a penitent,
Heaps on rent hairs the snow's thin ashes white
And moans and moans, her swaying body bent.

And Superstition gliding softly shakes
With wasted hands, that vainly grope and seek,
The rustling curtains; of each cranny makes
Cold, ghostly lips that wailing fain would speak.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

Where are the songs of Summer? - With the sun,
Opening the dusky eyelids of the south,
Till shade and silence waken up as one,
And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds? - Away, away,
On panting wings through the inclement skies,
        Lest owls should prey
        Undazzled at noon-day,
And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

Where are the blooms of Summer? - In the west,
Blushing their last ...

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

Happy are they whom men and women love,
And you were happy as a river that flows
Down between lonely hills, and knows
The pang and virtue of that loneliness,
And moves unresting on until it move
Under the trees that stoop at the low brink
And deepen their cool shade, and drink
And sing and hush and sing again,
Breathing their music's many-toned caress;
While the river with his high clear music speaks
Sometimes of loneliness, of hills obscure,
Sometimes of sunlight dancing on the plain,
Or of the night of stars unbared and deep
Multiplied in his depths unbared and pure;
Sometimes of winds that from the unknown sea creep,
Sometimes of morning when most clear it breaks
Spilling its brightness on his breast like rain:--
And then flows on in loneliness again

Upon the mossed rock by the spring
She sits, forgetful of her pail,
Lost in remote remembering
Of that which may no more avail.

Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed
Above a brow lined deep with care,
The color of a leaf long pressed,
A faded leaf that once was fair.

You may not know her from the stone
So still she sits who does not stir,
Thinking of this one thing alone -
The love that never came to her.

    The old year is dying,
    Its last hour is hieing
        Over the verge;
    The night winds are plying,
    And are mournfully sighing
        Its funeral dirge.

    And now, in its even,
    While its spirit is riven
        Through the bright zone,
    Beyond the heaven
    To whence it was given -
        To the unknown.

    Its sadness in ending
    Like a cloud is descending
        Over my soul,
    And the thoughts that are pending
    With the low winds are blending,
        Helping their dole.

    A year of existence
    Has passed to the distance
        Ne'er to return:
    To the right was resistance,
    From duty desistance,
        Nor would I learn.

    But duty neglected

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the laboring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers,

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.