Chen, Yuan

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TITLE="Wilde, Oscar"><U>Wilde, Oscar</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id244.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Williams, William Carlos"><U>Williams, William Carlos</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id93.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wordsworth, William"><U>Wordsworth, William</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id92.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Yeats, William Butler"><U>Yeats, William Butler</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id241.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Yushij, Nima"><U>Yushij, Nima</U></A></div> <bR> <div> Chen, Yuan</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>The Summer Palace</b></div> <bR> <div> <B>In the faded old imperial palace,</b></div> <div> <B>Peonies are red, but no one comes to see them. . . .</b></div> <div> <B>The ladies-in-waiting have grown white-haired</b></div> <div> <B>Debating the pomps of Emperor Hsuan-tsung. </b></div> <bR> <div> <B>------------------------------------------------------------------------------</b></div> <bR> <div> <B>An Elegy</b><B> </b></div> <bR> <div> <B>I</b></div> <div> <B>O youngest, best-loved daughter of Hsieh,</b></div> <div> <B>Who unluckily married this penniless scholar,</b></div> <div> <B>You patched my clothes from your own wicker basket,</b></div> <div> <B>And I coaxed off your hairpins of gold, to buy wine with;</b></div> <div> <B>For dinner we had to pick wild herbs -</b></div> <div> <B>And to use dry locust-leaves for our kindling.</b></div> <div> <B>. . . Today they are paying me a hundred thousand -</b></div> <div> <B>And all that I can bring to you is a temple of sacrifice.</b></div> <bR> <div> <B>II</b></div> <div> <B>We joked, long ago, about one of us dying,</b></div> <div> <B>But suddenly, before my eyes, you are gone.</b></div> <div> <B>Almost all your clothes have been given away;</b></div> <div> <B>Your needleworok is sealed, I dare not look at it. . . .</b></div> <div> <B>I continue your bounty to our men and our maids -</b></div> <div> <B>Sometimes, in a dream, I bring you gifts.</b></div> <div> <B>. . . This is a sorrow that all mandkind must know -</b></div> <div> <B>But not as those know it who have been poor together.</b></div> <bR> <div> <B>III</b></div> <div> <B>I sit here alone, mourning for us both.</b></div> <div> <B>How many years do I lack now of my threescore and ten?</b></div> <div> <B>There have been better men than I to whom heaven denied a son,</b></div> <div> <B>There was a better poet than I whose dead wife could not hear him.</b></div> <div> <B>What have I to hope for in the darkness of our tomb?</b></div> <div> <B>You and I had little faith in a meeting after death -</b></div> <div> <B>Yet my open eyes can see all night</b></div> <div> <B>That lifelong trouble of your brow.</b></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>