{"collection":"cfu","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cfu/mtc/mtc25.htm","path":"cfu/mtc/mtc25.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cfu/mtc/mtc25.htm","text":"More Translations from the Chinese, by Arthur Waley, [1919]\nIllness and idleness give me much leisure.\n What do I do with my leisure, when it comes?\n I cannot bring myself to discard inkstone and brush;\n Now and then I make a new poem.\n When the poem is made, it is slight and flavourless,\n A thing of derision to almost every one.\n Superior people will be pained at the flatness of the metre;\n Common people will hate the plainness of the words.\n I sing it to myself, then stop and think about it\u2026\nThe Prefects of Soochow and P\u2019\u0113ng-ts\u0113\u00a01\n Would perhaps have praised it, but they died long ago.\n Who else would care to hear it?\n No one to-day except Y\u00fcan Ch\u0113n,\n And he is banished to the City of Chiang-ling,\n For three years an usher in the Penal Court.\n Parted from me by three thousand leagues\n He will never know even that the poem was made.\n52:1 Wei Ying-wu, eighth century A. D., and T\u2018ao Ch\u2018ien, A. D. 365-427.","title":"More Translations from the Chinese: Po Ch\u00fc-i: Illnes...","type":"page"}