Poems Mr. Charlie Likes

Mr. Charlie · 10-08-2015, 11:52 AM

A nightingale's song
Brings me out of a dream:
The morning glows.

- Ryokan

Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream.

- Ryokan

In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.

- Ryokan

How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
and cherry trees bloom in the mountains.

- Ryokan

A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines from the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

- Ryokan

My life may appear melancholy,
But travelling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three sho of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion,
I cannot say… wealth and honor are nothing but dust,
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
And stretch out both feet in answer.

- Ryokan

Mr. Charlie · 10-28-2015, 05:15 PM

Daily, nothing particular,
Only nodding to myself,
Nothing to choose, nothing to discard.
No coming, no going,
No person in purple,
Blue mountains without a speck of dust.
I exercise occult and subtle powers,
Carrying water, shouldering firewood.

- Ho Koji,

Sitting alone amongst the forest trees,
The sixfold faculties always still and quiet.
It seems as if you've lost a precious jewel,
But have no pain of worry or distress.

In all the World your visage has no peer,
And yet you always sit with your eyes closed.
The thoughts of each of us possess a doubt:
What do you seek by dwelling in this place?

- Nagarjuna

You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

- Han Shan

Like the empty sky it has no boundaries,
Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear.
When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it,
But you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks;
When you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms,
And no crowd is blocking the way.

- Cheng-tao Ke

Even
a good thing
isn't
as good as
nothing.

- Wu-men

I'd like to
Offer something
To help you;
But in the Zen School,
We don't have a single thing!

- Zen Master Ikkyu

An inch of time is an inch of gold:
Treasure it.
Appreciate its fleeting nature-
Misplaced gold is easily found,
Misspent time is lost forever.

- Loy Ching-Yuen

I praise those ancient Chinamen

Who left me a few words,

Usually a pointless joke or a silly question

A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin

of a quick splashed picture - bug, leaf,

caricature of a Teacher -

On paper held together now by little more than ink

and their own strength brushed momentarily over it

Their world and several others since

Gone to hell and a handbasket, they knew it—

Cheered as it whizzed by—

& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars

Happy to have saved us all.

- Philip Whalen

~~Baihe~~ · 10-31-2015, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Charlie

I don't know anything about this next poet, Mary Oliver. But I really like her poetry:

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

- Mary Oliver

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild and want it back.

- Mary Oliver

I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things of little importance,
in full self-attendance.
A condition I can't really call being alive.

- Mary Oliver

Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

- Mary Oliver

What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

- Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But
You can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.

And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
As though with your arms open.

- Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

I do not live happily or comfortably
With the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
The news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
Having felt something more wonderful
Than all the electricity of New York City.

- Mary Oliver

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

- Mary Oliver

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

- Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
- Mary Oliver

Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.

- Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

- Mary Oliver

Ten times a day something happens to me like this -
some strengthening throb of amazement -
some good sweet empathic ping and swell.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

- Mary Oliver

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.

- Mary Oliver

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

- Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

- Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

- Mary Oliver

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

- Mary Oliver

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't
mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example -- I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

- Mary Oliver

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

- Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.

- Mary Olive

Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving

- Mary Oliver

It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not
dazzled at least ten times a day.

- Mary Oliver

Thanks for your sharing .I like these poetries very much.So wonderful!The rains ,the roses ,the mountains,the trees,the moon ,and the sun all have lives.And these are all bestowed by God .

Mr. Charlie · 11-03-2015, 02:33 PM

Glad you like 'em. She is indeed a fine poet.

~~Baihe~~ · 11-03-2015, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Charlie

Glad you like 'em. She is indeed a fine poet.

I feel the same way.If you have her more poems,please share with me .

Mr. Charlie · 11-05-2015, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baihe

I feel the same way.If you have her more poems,please share with me .

Just for you:

Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

- Mary Oliver

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

- Mary Oliver

Mr. Charlie · 11-06-2015, 11:58 AM

I've already posted some of Li Bai's poetry but have come across some superior (or preferrred at least) translations. First a little about the man:

Li Bai (701-762) is best known for his love of wine and is widely acknowledged as China's greatest poet. It is said that Li Bai never ammended or edited any of his poems, that every one of his poems is a first draft - a remarkable fact if true.

Rather unusually for the time, he was celebrated during his own lifetime and indeed recognised as a genius - a reputation that led him to become friend and advisor to the Emperor - a precarious position that later saw him imprisoned, sentenced to death, and eventually exiled.

He was a controversial figure, a free spirit with a deep love of nature and even deeper love of Taoist values who championed intoxication and the nomadic lifestyle, and criticised law and order. Rumour has it he drowned while drunkenly reaching for the reflection of the moon on the river, which, ironically, is a recurring scene in many of his poems.

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

- Li Bai

This next one beautifully describes the dropping away of the self until Oneness is experienced:

The birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

- Li Bai

More soon.

Mr. Charlie · 11-06-2015, 01:05 PM

I shoulda just copy and pasted this (perhaps his most famous poem) but I'm lazy. Try not to let the rubbish song put you off as it's a good translation.

Mr. Charlie · 11-07-2015, 09:52 AM

In my golden cup, pure wine worth ten thousand a pint;
on a jade plate, fine food worth ten thousand coins.
I stop drinking and put down my chopsticks, unable to eat,
draw my sword to dance, look anxiously in all directions.
I want to cross the Yellow River, but ice blocks my way;
I want to climb Mount Taihang, but snow fills the sky.
In idleness I drop a hook into the azure creek,
suddenly I’m back in my boat, dreaming of distant places.
Traveling is hard!
Traveling is hard!
So many forks in the road–
which one to take?

A great enterprise must find the right moment;
I hoist my sail into the clouds and cross the mighty ocean.

- Li Bai

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed.
But at last drunkenness overcame us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for cover.

- Li Bai

The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey between heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the elixir in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
While the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?

-Li Bai

If heaven loved not wine,
A Wine Star would not be in heaven;
If earth loved not wine,
The Wine Spring would not be on earth.
Since heaven and earth love wine,
Need a tippling mortal be ashamed?
The transparent wine, I hear,
Has the soothing virtue of a sage,
While the turgid is rich, they say,
As the fertile mind of the wise.
Both the sage and the wise were drinkers,
Why seek for peers among gods and goblins?
Three cups open the grand door to bliss;
Take a jugful, the universe is yours.
Such is the rapture found in wine,
That the sober shall never inherit.

- Li Bai

~~Baihe~~ · 11-07-2015, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Charlie

Just for you:

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

- Mary Oliver

When I read this ,I see a beautiful picture

10-08-2015, 11:52 AM	#31 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	A nightingale's song Brings me out of a dream: The morning glows. - Ryokan Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow, Serenaded by a stray bird or two. Kings and commoners end up the same, No more enduring than last night's dream. - Ryokan In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same. What can ever be lost? What can be attained? If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time. If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us. - Ryokan How can we ever lose interest in life? Spring has come again and cherry trees bloom in the mountains. - Ryokan A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room Filled only with incense smoke. Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees; On the bed several volumes of poetry. The moon shines from the top of the window, And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry of insects. Looking at this scene, limitless emotion, But not one word. - Ryokan My life may appear melancholy, But travelling through this world I have entrusted myself to Heaven. In my sack, three sho of rice; By the hearth, a bundle of firewood. If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion, I cannot say… wealth and honor are nothing but dust, As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage And stretch out both feet in answer. - Ryokan

10-28-2015, 05:15 PM	#32 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	Daily, nothing particular, Only nodding to myself, Nothing to choose, nothing to discard. No coming, no going, No person in purple, Blue mountains without a speck of dust. I exercise occult and subtle powers, Carrying water, shouldering firewood. - Ho Koji, Sitting alone amongst the forest trees, The sixfold faculties always still and quiet. It seems as if you've lost a precious jewel, But have no pain of worry or distress. In all the World your visage has no peer, And yet you always sit with your eyes closed. The thoughts of each of us possess a doubt: What do you seek by dwelling in this place? - Nagarjuna You find a flower half-buried in leaves, And in your eye its very fate resides. Loving beauty, you caress the bloom; Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor. Terrible to love the lovely so, To count your own years, to say "I'm old," To see a flower half-buried in leaves And come face to face with what you are. - Han Shan Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear. When you seek to know it, you cannot see it. You cannot take hold of it, But you cannot lose it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you are silent, it speaks; When you speak, it is silent. The great gate is wide open to bestow alms, And no crowd is blocking the way. - Cheng-tao Ke Even a good thing isn't as good as nothing. - Wu-men I'd like to Offer something To help you; But in the Zen School, We don't have a single thing! - Zen Master Ikkyu An inch of time is an inch of gold: Treasure it. Appreciate its fleeting nature- Misplaced gold is easily found, Misspent time is lost forever. - Loy Ching-Yuen I praise those ancient Chinamen Who left me a few words, Usually a pointless joke or a silly question A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick splashed picture - bug, leaf, caricature of a Teacher - On paper held together now by little more than ink and their own strength brushed momentarily over it Their world and several others since Gone to hell and a handbasket, they knew it— Cheered as it whizzed by— & conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars Happy to have saved us all. - Philip Whalen

11-03-2015, 02:33 PM	#34 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	Glad you like 'em. She is indeed a fine poet.

11-06-2015, 11:58 AM	#37 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	I've already posted some of Li Bai's poetry but have come across some superior (or preferrred at least) translations. First a little about the man: Li Bai (701-762) is best known for his love of wine and is widely acknowledged as China's greatest poet. It is said that Li Bai never ammended or edited any of his poems, that every one of his poems is a first draft - a remarkable fact if true. Rather unusually for the time, he was celebrated during his own lifetime and indeed recognised as a genius - a reputation that led him to become friend and advisor to the Emperor - a precarious position that later saw him imprisoned, sentenced to death, and eventually exiled. He was a controversial figure, a free spirit with a deep love of nature and even deeper love of Taoist values who championed intoxication and the nomadic lifestyle, and criticised law and order. Rumour has it he drowned while drunkenly reaching for the reflection of the moon on the river, which, ironically, is a recurring scene in many of his poems. You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men. - Li Bai This next one beautifully describes the dropping away of the self until Oneness is experienced: The birds have vanished from the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. - Li Bai More soon.

11-06-2015, 01:05 PM	#38 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	I shoulda just copy and pasted this (perhaps his most famous poem) but I'm lazy. Try not to let the rubbish song put you off as it's a good translation.

11-07-2015, 09:52 AM	#39 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie Shoo Thoughts Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: These Mountains Posts: 2,308	In my golden cup, pure wine worth ten thousand a pint; on a jade plate, fine food worth ten thousand coins. I stop drinking and put down my chopsticks, unable to eat, draw my sword to dance, look anxiously in all directions. I want to cross the Yellow River, but ice blocks my way; I want to climb Mount Taihang, but snow fills the sky. In idleness I drop a hook into the azure creek, suddenly I’m back in my boat, dreaming of distant places. Traveling is hard! Traveling is hard! So many forks in the road– which one to take? A great enterprise must find the right moment; I hoist my sail into the clouds and cross the mighty ocean. - Li Bai To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows, We drained a hundred jugs of wine. A splendid night it was . . . . In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed. But at last drunkenness overcame us; And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain, The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for cover. - Li Bai The living is a passing traveler; The dead, a man come home. One brief journey between heaven and earth, Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages. The rabbit in the moon pounds the elixir in vain; Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood. Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word While the green pines feel the coming of the spring. Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again. What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory? -Li Bai If heaven loved not wine, A Wine Star would not be in heaven; If earth loved not wine, The Wine Spring would not be on earth. Since heaven and earth love wine, Need a tippling mortal be ashamed? The transparent wine, I hear, Has the soothing virtue of a sage, While the turgid is rich, they say, As the fertile mind of the wise. Both the sage and the wise were drinkers, Why seek for peers among gods and goblins? Three cups open the grand door to bliss; Take a jugful, the universe is yours. Such is the rapture found in wine, That the sober shall never inherit. - Li Bai