Page:A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919).djvu/195

 Then one Tartar lifted up his voice and spoke to the other Tartars, "Your sorrows are none at all compared with my sorrows." Those that were with him in the same band asked to hear his tale: As he tried to speak the words were choked by anger. He told them "I was born and bred in the town of Liang-yüan. In the frontier wars of Ta-li I fell into the Tartars' hands. Since the days the Tartars took me alive forty years have passed: They put me into a coat of skins tied with a belt of rope. Only on the first of the first month might I wear my Chinese dress. As I put on my coat and arranged my cap, how fast the tears flowed! I made in my heart a secret vow I would find a way home: I hid my plan from my Tartar wife and the children she had borne me in the land. I thought to myself, 'It is well for me that my limbs are still strong,' And yet, being old, in my heart I feared I should never live to return. The Tartar chieftains shoot so well that the birds are afraid to fly: From the risk of their arrows I escaped alive and fled swiftly home. Hiding all day and walking all night, I crossed the Great Desert: [ 189 ]