A Portrait
How shall I write of you, little friend,
To my father on the River of Serenity?
I will tell him of your twenty yellow curls
Tumbling in a cascade about your shoulders;
Your bright mouth and fine brow,
Lit by yet brighter eyes,
Where fireflies dance;
How in your cheeks you hold
The colours of the flower before its leaves unclose;
How the tones of your voice, sounding in my ears,
Float before my eyes like strings of lanterns;
How, when I look closely upon you,
I see my thoughts like a white river in your eyes;
How, as I walk down the street where you have trod,
The very stones are to me the smiles that you scatter as you pass.
How your look thrills my heart as a guitar thrills to the touch.
And I will tell him that you are not for me,
For you are white and I am yellow;
Unless, perchance, shame and disgrace fall upon you,
As it falls upon some girls of this quarter,
And your neighbours and friends pass by the other way.
Then, perhaps, it would be permitted to me
To render service to you.
On a Saying of Mencius
That was well said of Mencius:
The misfortunes of one are the entertainment of many.
When Prosperity attended the occasions of this person,
And his heart smiled within him,
He was regarded and received on all sides by his fellows
With attitudes of dignity and expressions of mandarin-like solemnity,
And his laughing heart could fetch no smile
To the faces of those about him.
But when, on a recent manifestation of evil spirits,
He was hailed before those in authority
And commanded to pay very many taels,
For the fault of possessing some morsels of chandu, the Great Tobacco,
And his heart was heavy and dark as a raincloud within him,
He was received on all sides
With attitudes of mirth and expressions of no-gravity.
Dockside Noises
There are in Limehouse many sounds;
A hundred different sounds by day and night.
The crash and mutter of the dockside railway,
The noise of quarrel, the noise of fist on face,
My country's songs, guitars, and gramophones,
The noise of boot on stone,
The noise of women bargaining their flesh,
The noise of singers in the ships,
Sounds of threat and sounds of fear,
Blasts of hammer and steel and iron,
The scream of syren, the wail of hooter,
The clangour of angry bells,
The boom of guns, the clatter of factories,
The panic of feet, and malevolent words.