Page:More Translations from the Chinese (Waley).djvu/57

 [25] WINTER NIGHT

house is poor; those that I love have left me; My body sick; I cannot join the feast. There is not a living soul before my eyes As I lie alone locked in my cottage room. My broken lamp burns with a feeble flame; My tattered curtains are crooked and do not meet. "Tsek, tsek" on the door-step and window-sill Again I hear the new snow fall. As I grow older, gradually I sleep less; I wake at midnight and sit up straight in bed. If I had not learned the "art of sitting and forgetting," How could I bear this utter loneliness? Stiff and stark my body cleaves to the earth; Unimpeded my soul yields to Change. So has it been for four hateful years, Through one thousand and three hundred nights! [53]