Above, a mountain ten thousand feet high:
Below, a river a thousand fathoms deep.
A strip of green, walled by cliffs of stone:
Wide enough for the passage of a single reed.
At Chu-t’ang a straight cleft yawns:
At Yen-yu islands block the stream.
Long before night the walls are black with dusk;
Without wind white waves rise.
The big rocks are like a flat sword:
The little rocks resemble ivory tusks.
We are stuck fast and cannot move a step
How much the less, three hundred miles?
Frail and slender, the twisted-bamboo rope:
Weak, the dangerous hold on towers’ feet.
A single slip- the whole convoy lost:
And my life hangs of this thread!
I have heard a saying "He that has an upright heart
Shall walk scathless through the lands of Man and Mo.”
How can I believe that since the world began
In every shipwreck none have drowned but rogues?
And how can I, born in evil days
And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate?
Often I fear that these un-talented limbs
Will be laid at last in an un-named grave!
What man's land is a graveyard?
ReplyDeleteIt is the crowded home of ghosts,-
Wise and foolish shoulder to shoulder.
The King of the Dead claims them all;
Man's fate knows no tarrying.
"The Graveyard" Sung at the burial of common men.
How swiftly it dries,
The dew on the garlic-leaf.
The dew that dries so fast
To-morrow will fall again.
But he whom we carry to the grave
Will never more return.
"The Dew on the Garlic-leaf"
Sung at the burial of kings and princes.