Page:A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919).djvu/196

 Where clouds are dark and the moon black and the sands eddy in the wind. Frightened, I sheltered at the Green Grave, where the frozen grasses are few: Stealthily I crossed the Yellow River, at night, on the thin ice, Suddenly I heard Han drums and the sound of soldiers coming: I went to meet them at the road-side, bowing to them as they came. But the moving horsemen did not hear that I spoke the Han tongue: Their Captain took me for a Tartar born and had me bound in chains. They are sending me away to the south-east, to a low and swampy land: No one now will take pity on me: resistance is all in vain. Thinking of this, my voice chokes and I ask of Heaven above, Was I spared from death only to spend the rest of my years in sorrow? My native village of Liang-yüan I shall not see again: My wife and children in the Tartars' land I have fruitlessly deserted. When I fell among Tartars and was taken prisoner, I pined for the land of Han: Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into a Tartar. [ 190 ]