The Jade Mountain/A Song of White Snow
A SONG OF WHITE SNOW
In Farewell to Field-Clerk Wu Going Home
The north wind rolls the white grasses and breaks them;And the Eighth-month snow across the Tartar skyIs like a spring gale, come up in the night,Blowing open the petals of ten thousand pear-trees.It enters the pearl blinds, it wets the silk curtains;A fur coat feels cold, a cotton mat flimsy;Bows become rigid, can hardly be drawnAnd the metal of armour congeals on the men;The sand-sea deepens with fathomless ice,~And darkness masses its endless clouds;But we drink to our guest bound home from camp,And play him barbarian lutes, guitars, harps;Till at dusk, when the drifts are crushing our tentsAnd our frozen red flags cannot flutter in the wind,We watch him through Wheel-Tower Gate going eastwardInto the snow-mounds of Heaven-Peak Road. . . .And then he disappears at the turn of the pass,Leaving behind him only hoof-prints.