ring.

Wusih

Meditation

In all the city where I dwell two spaces only are wide
and clean.
One is the compound about the great church of the
mission within the wall; the other is the courtyard
of the great factory beyond the wall.
In these two, one can breathe.

And two sounds there are, above the multitudinous crying
of the city, two sounds that recur as time recurs--the
great bell of the mission and the
whistle of the factory.
Every hour of the day the mission bell strikes, clear,
deep-toned--telling perhaps of peace.
And in the morning and in the evening the factory
whistle blows, shrill, provocative--telling surely
of toil.
Now, when the mulberry trees are bare and the wintry
wind lifts the rags of the beggars, the day shift
at the factory is ten hours, and the night shift
is fourteen.
They are divided one from the other by the whistle,
shrill, provocative.
The mission and the factory are the West. What
they are I know.

And between them lies the Orient--struggling and
suffering, spawning and dying--but what it is
I shall never know.

Yet there are two clean spaces in the city where I dwell,
the compound of the church within the wall, and
the courtyard of the factory beyond the wall.
It is something that in these two one can breathe.

Wusih

Chinese New Year

Mrs. Sung has a new kitchen-god.
The old one--he who has presided over the household
this twelvemonth--has returned to the
Celestial Regions to make his report.
Before she burned him Mrs. Sung smeared his mouth
with sugar; so that doubtless the report will be
favorable.
Now she has a new god.
As she paid ten coppers for him he is handsomely
painted and should be highly efficacious.
So there is rejoicing in the house of Mrs. Sung.

Peking

Echoes

Crepuscule

Like the patter of rain on the crisp leaves of autumn
are the tiny footfalls of the fox-maidens.

Festival of the Dragon Boats

On the fifth day of the fifth month the statesman Kueh
Yuen drowned himself in the river Mih-lo.
Since then twenty-three centuries have passed, and the
mountains wear away.
Yet every year, on the fifth day of the fifth month,
the great Dragon Boats, gay with flags and gongs,
search diligently in the streams of the Empire
for the body of Kueh Yuen.

Kang Yi

When Kang Yi had been long dead the Empress decreed