In Reply to an Invitation
Don't think of me as one of no courtesy
O elegant and refined foreign one,
If I do not accept your high-minded invitation
To drink rice-spirit with you
At the little place called The Blue Lantern, near Pennyfields.
Please don't regard me as lacking in gracious behaviour,
Or as insufferably ignorant of the teachings of the Book of Rites
But I am sojourning here in a strange land,
And am not fully informed of the usages of your dignified people.
As the wise Mencius observed in one of his inspired hours,
Doubtless thinking forward to situation of this person:
Child who has once suffered unpleasant sensation of burning,
Ever afterward reluctant to approach stove.
Wherefore, as this person once accepted an invitation,
In words as affable and polished as yours, Mister,
To drink rice-spirit at The Blue Lantern,
And was there subjected to a custom of this country
Of an entirely disturbing and unpleasing nature,
Known as Ceremony of Confidence,
He has, since that day, viewed The Blue Lantern
With a feeling of most decided repugnance.
A Night-Piece
I climbed the other day up to the roof
Of the commanding and palatial Home for Asiatics
And looked across the city at the hour of no-light.
Across great space of dark I looked,
But the skirt of darkness had a hundred rents,
Made by the lights of many people's homes.
My life is a great skirt of darkness,
But human kindliness has torn it through,
So that it shows ten thousand gaping rents
Where the light comes in.
A Smile Given In Passing
As I walked the street in the purring evening
A little maid with yellow curls
Tossed me a smile; and suddenly Pennyfields
Grew from darkness to light, and the light of the stars
Grew pale.