and gave ourselves to the moments that passed, forgetting that it would soon be over, like willow-flowers or snow. Rouged faces, flushed with drink, looked well in the sunset. Clear water a hundred feet deep reflected the faces of the singers—singing-girls delicate and graceful in the light of the young moon. And the girls sang again and again to make the gauze dresses dance. The clear wind blew the songs away into the empty sky: the sound coiled in the air like moving clouds in flight.
The pleasures of those times shall never again be met with. I went West to offer up a Ballad of Tall Willows,[1] but got no promotion at the Northern Gate and, white-headed, went back to the Eastern Hills.
Once we met at the Southern end of Wei Bridge, but scattered again to the north of the Tso Terrace.
And if you ask me how many are my regrets at this parting, I will tell you they come from me thick as the flowers that fall at Spring's end.
But I cannot tell you all I feel; I could not even if I went on talking for ever. So I call in the boy and make him kneel here and tie this up, and send it to you, a remembrance, from a thousand miles away.
(Part of a Poem in Irregular Metre.)
On through the night I flew, high over the Mirror Lake. The lake-moon cast my shadow on the waves and travelled with me to the stream of Shan. The Lord Hsieh's[2] lodging-place was still there. The blue waters rippled; the cry of the apes was shrill. I shod my feet with the shoes of the Lord Hsieh and "climbed to Heaven on a ladder of dark clouds."[3] Half-way up, I saw the unrisen
