Sing, once a green willow;
But now all its leaves smell of base £ s. d.;
Sing willow, willow, willow!
The old stream runs by her, not with the old tones,
Sing willow, willow, willow!
But, churned by coarse paddles, it plashes and groans;
Sing willow, willow, willow!
Chang. Ah, yellow and irradiant sunflower of my soul's secret shrine, sing not thus dolefully, I entreat thee. What avails the permission to escape awhile our old ornithological metamorphosis, and revisit once again the glimpses of the Mandarin's country seat, the pavilion, the peach and the orange-tree, the elegant wooden fence, the bridge, the boat, and, above all, the willow, only to sing songs whose spirit-cleaving cadences sting thy Chang more than ever did the angry Mandarin's whip-lash?
Li-Chi (mournfully). What, indeed? But O, sublimated saffron-bag of my spirit's idolatry, who can help weeping at sight of this?
Chang (reading). "National and International Amalgamated Bank!" O, mighty but much-too-free-with-the-whip-hand-of-parental-authority Mandarin of the Middle Kingdom, what would you have thought of this transformation?