There ’s a joy without canker or cark, There ’s a pleasure eternally new, ’T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that ’s ancient and blue; Unchipped, all the centuries through It has passed, since the chime of it rang, And they fashioned it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. These dragons (their tails, you remark, Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),— When Noah came out of the ark, Did these lie in wait for his crew? They snorted, they snapped, and they slew, They were mighty of fin and of fang, And their portraits Celestials drew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. Here ’s a pot with a cot in a park, In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died, and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may, as they sang; ’T is a tale was undoubtedly true In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. ENVOY Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do, Kind critic; your “tongue has a tang,” But—a sage never heeded a shrew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Of Blue China
More from Poet
|
There ’s a joy without canker or cark, There ’s a pleasure eternally new, ’T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that ’s ancient and blue; Unchipped, all the centuries through It has passed, since the chime of it rang, And they fashioned it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor... |
Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to... |
Prefacing the Butcher-Lang Translation AS one that for a weary space has lain Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, Where that Ææan Isle forgets the Main, And only the low lutes of love complain, And only shadows of wan lovers pine; As such an... |
He sat among the woods; he heard The sylvan merriment; he saw The pranks of butterfly and bird, The humors of the ape, the daw. And in the lion or the frog,— In all the life of moor and fen,— In ass and peacock, stork and dog, He read similitudes of men. “Of these, from those,” he cried... |