them quiver
With faint drum-tones of thunder.

Out of the crane-haunted mists of autumn,
Blue and brown
Rolls the moon.

There was a city living here long ago,
Of all that city
There is only one stone left half-buried in the marsh,
With characters upon it which no one now can read.

_Despair_

Despair hangs in the broken folds of my garments;
It clogs my footsteps,
Like snow in the cherry bloom.

In my heart is the sorrow
Of years like red leaves buried in snow.

_The Lonely Grave_

Pilgrims will ascend the road in early summer,
Passing my tombstone
Mossy, long forgotten.

Girls will laugh and scatter cherry petals,
Sometimes they will rest in the twisted pine-trees' shade.

If one presses her warm lips to this tablet
The dust of my body will feel a thrill, deep down in the silent earth.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

_Part IV_

_Evening Sky_

The sky spreads out its poor array
Of tattered flags,
Saffron and rose
Over the weary huddle of housetops
Smoking their evening pipes in silence.

_City Lights_

The city gleams with lights this evening
Like loud and yawning laughter from red lips.

_Fugitive Beauty_

As the fish that leaps from the river,
As the dropping of a November leaf at twilight,
As the faint flicker of lightning down the southern sky,
So I saw beauty, far away.

_Silver Jars_

I dreamed I caught your loveliness
In little silver jars:
And when you died I opened them,
And there was only soot within.

_Evening Rain_

Rain fell so softly, in the evening,
I almost thought it was the trees that were talking.

_Toy-Boxes_

Cities are the toy-boxes
Time plays with:
And there are often many doll-houses
Of which the dolls are lost.

_Moods_

A poet's moods:
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.

_Grass_

Grass moves in the wind,
My soul is backwards blown.

_A Landscape_

Land, green-brown;
Sea, brown-grey;
Island, dull peacock blue;
Sky, stone-grey.

_Terror_

Because of the long pallid petals of white chrysanthemums
Waving to and fro,
I dare not go.

_Mid-Summer Dusk_

Swallows twittering at twilight:
Waves of heat
Churned