The Flower Fair
The city walls rise up to greet
Spring's luminous twilight hours;
The clamour of carts goes down the street:
This is the Fair of Flowers.
Leisure and pleasure drift along,
Beggar and marquis join the throng,
And care, humility, rank, and pride
In the sight of the flowers are laid aside.
Bright, oh! bright are a thousand shades,
Crimson splashes and slender blades
With five white fillets bound.
Tents are here that will cover all,
Ringed with trellis and leafy wall,
And the dust is laid around.
Naught but life doth here display;
The dying flower is cast away;
Families meet and intermingle,
Lovers are parted, and friends go single.
One ambition all avow —
A roof to harbour, a field to plough.
See, they come to the Flower Fair,
Youth and maiden, a laughing pair.
Bowed and sighing the greybeard wends
Alone to the mart where sighing ends.
For here is a burden all may bear,
The crimson and gold of the Flower Fair.
The Penalties of Rank
Three score and ten! A slave to office yet!
In the Li Chi these luminous words befall:
"The lust for honours honours not at all,"
Here is the golden line we most forget.
Alas! how these long years afflict a man!
When teeth are gone, and failing eyes grow dim.
The morning dews brought dreams of fame to him
Who bears in dusk the burdens of his clan.
His eyes still linger on the tassel blue,
And still the red sedan of rank appeals,
But his shrunk belly scarce the girdle feels
As, bowed, he crawls the Prince's Gateway through.
Where is the man that would not wealth acclaim?
Who would not truckle for his sovereign's grace?
Yet years of high renown their furrows trace,
And greatness overwhelms the weary frame.
The springs of laughter flow not from his heart,
Where bide the dust and glamour of old days.
Who walks alone in contemplation's ways?
'TIS HE, THE HAPPY MAN, WHO DWELLS APART.
The Island of Pines
Across the willow-lake a temple shines,
Pale, through the lotus-girdled isle of pines,
And twilight listens to the drip of oars —
The coming of dark boats with scented stores
Of orange seed; the mist leans from the hill,
While palm leaves sway 'twixt wind and water chill,
And waves of smoke like phantoms rise and fade
Into a trembling tangle of green jade.
I dream strange dreams within my tower room,
Dreams from the glimmering realms of even gloom;
Until each princely guest doth, landing, raise
His eyes, upon the full-orbed moon to gaze —
The old moon-palace that in ocean stands
Mid clouds of thistle-down and jewelled strands.