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553. «He was a shepherd and he spent his hours…»

A person encountered in the Western I lills near

Beitsing

He was a shepherd and he spent his hours upon a hillside taking care of sheep. He slept in his small hut of mud and straw and ate his rice and sometimes drank his tea. His hands were gnarled and grimy and his clothes he hardly ever changed from month to month for he was one of the unwashed who lived so many li from rivers or a spring. In early morning, when some stranger chanced, dangling his dusty legs, on donkey back to pass his hut, the friendly shepherd called by way of greeting, — «Have you had your rice?»

554. «At daybreak, as the skies lighten…»

Early morning in Beitsing: a sound fondly recalled.

At daybreak, as the skies lighten, I roll up my window and listen to my city. The summer heat has not yet choked the perfumed breath of night; the dust in the street lies unwaken by pattering feet, but the jingle of peddlers' wares begins to reach my ears, and then, what I await: the whistling pigeon in the sky above Beitsing.

555. «When I was small I had a great vain dream…»

Only the waters of the Ch'in and Wei

Roll green and changeless, as in years

gone by.

Po Chu-i

When I was small I had a great vain dream, a kind of game just with myself alone: because the fathers of my little playmates were wrapped far more than mine in worldly riches, I played that one fine day I would invite them to my poor shabby door and they would knock and through that creaking door in that grey alley, awestruck, would tiptoe into sparkling halls bedecked with wealth and of surpassing beauty. This never happened, nor did I regret it for still they came, and still we played together. Now years have passed and we have ail been scattered. And all these many years I have been toiling and have it seems at last built quite a palace behind that gate, and have assembled in it great wealth and beauty far belittling those which once I dreamed of as a foolish child; — So much to show, with humble pride and grateful, to share and to enjoy, if they would knock upon my gate, those small remembered playmates… But I can hear the echo of their footsteps running, then silenced far down winding alleys, and in the myriad distant streets and cities they cannot find the gateway to my house.