{"collection":"cfu","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cfu/mtc/mtc44.htm","path":"cfu/mtc/mtc44.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cfu/mtc/mtc44.htm","text":"More Translations from the Chinese, by Arthur Waley, [1919]\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Below the hall\n The pine-trees grow in front of the steps,\n Irregularly scattered,\u2014not in ordered lines.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some are tall and some are low:\n The tallest of them is six roods high;\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The lowest but ten feet.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They are like wild things\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And no one knows who planted them.\n They touch the walls of my blue-tiled house;\n Their roots are sunk in the terrace of white sand.\n Morning and evening they are visited by the wind and moon;\n Rain or fine,\u2014they are free from dust and mud.\n In the gales of autumn they whisper a vague tune;\n From the suns of summer they yield a cool shade.\n At the height of spring the fine evening, rain\n Fills their leaves with a load of hanging pearls.\n At the year's end the time of great snow\n Stamps their branches with a fret of glittering jade.\n Of the Four Seasons each has its own mood;\n Among all the trees none is like another.\n Last year, when they heard I had bought this house,\n Neighbours mocked and the World called me mad\u2014\n That a whole family of twice ten souls\n Should move house for the sake of a few pines!\n Now that I have come to them, what have they given me?\nThey have only loosened the buckles of my care.\n Yet even so, they are \"profitable friends,\"\u00a01\n And fill my need of \"converse with wise men.\"\n Yet when I consider how, still a man of the world,\n In belt and cap I scurry through dirt and dust,\n From time to time my heart twinges with shame\n That I am not fit to be master of my pines!\n75:1 See \"Analects of Confucius\" 4 and 5, where three kinds of \"profitable friends\" and three kinds of \"profitable pleasures\" are described; the third of the latter being \"plenty of intelligent companions.\"","title":"More Translations from the Chinese: Po Ch\u00fc-i: The Pi...","type":"page"}