There all the voicing summer day
They sing, the happy rills.
No noisy sound awakes away
The echo of the hills.
A GLIMPSE OF CHINA.
I.
in a sampan.
(Min River, Fo Kien.)
Up in the misty morning,
Up past the gardened hills,
With the rhythmic stroke of the rowers,
While the blue deep pales and thrills!
Past the rice-fields green low-lying,
Where the sea-gull’s winging down
From the fleets of junks and sampans
And the ancient Chinese Town!
II.
in a chair.
(Foo-chow.)
From the bright and blinding sunshine,
From the whirling locust’s song,
Into the dark and narrow fissures
Of the streets I am borne along.
Here and there dusky-beaming
A sun-shaft broadens and drops
On the brown bare crowd slow-passing
The crowd of the open shops.
We move on over the bridges
With their straight-hewn blocks of stone.
And their quaint grey animal figures,
And the booths the hucksters own.
Behind a linen awning
Sits an ancient wight half-dead,
And a little dear of a girl is
Examining—his head.