Part 5 (2/2)

I have got a harp, but am too lazy to play; So it's just the same as if it had no strings.

My wife tells me there is no more bread in the house; I want to bake, but am too lazy to grind.

My friends and relatives write me long letters; I should like to read them, but they're such a bother to open.

I have always been told that Chi Shu-yeh[1]

Pa.s.sed his whole life in absolute idleness.

But he played the harp and sometimes trans.m.u.ted metals, So even _he_ was not so lazy as I.

[1] Also known as Chi K'ang. A famous Quietist.

[24] ILLNESS AND IDLENESS

[_Circa A.D. 812_]

Illness and idleness give me much leisure.

What do I do with my leisure, when it comes?

I cannot bring myself to discard inkstone and brush; Now and then I make a new poem.

When the poem is made, it is slight and flavourless, A thing of derision to almost every one.

Superior people will be pained at the flatness of the metre; Common people will hate the plainness of the words.

I sing it to myself, then stop and think about it ...

The Prefects of Soochow and P'eng-tse[1]

Would perhaps have praised it, but they died long ago.

Who else would care to hear it?

No one to-day except Yuan Chen, And _he_ is banished to the City of Chiang-ling, For three years an usher in the Penal Court.

Parted from me by three thousand leagues He will never know even that the poem was made.

[1] Wei Ying-wu, eighth century A.D., and T'ao Ch'ien, A.D. 365-427.

[25] WINTER NIGHT

[_Written during his retirement in 812_]

My house is poor; those that I love have left me; My body sick; I cannot join the feast.

There is not a living soul before my eyes As I lie alone locked in my cottage room.

My broken lamp burns with a feeble flame; My tattered curtains are crooked and do not meet.

”Tsek, tsek” on the door-step and window-sill Again I hear the new snow fall.

As I grow older, gradually I sleep less; I wake at midnight and sit up straight in bed.

If I had not learned the ”art of sitting and forgetting,”[1]

How could I bear this utter loneliness?

Stiff and stark my body cleaves to the earth; Unimpeded my soul yields to Change.[2]

So has it been for four hateful years, Through one thousand and three hundred nights!

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