Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/178

 Li Po the Chinese Poet

�� ��Do you know your foot-marks by our gate are old, And each and every one is filled up with green moss?

The mosses are too deep for me to sweep away;

And already in the autumn wind the leaves are falling.

The yellow butterflies of October

Flutter in pairs over the grass of the west garden.

My heart aches at seeing them. . ..

I sit sorrowing alone, and alas!

The vermilion of my face is fading.

Some day when you return down the river,

If you will write me a letter beforehand,

I will come to meet you — the way is not long —

I will come as far as the Long Wind Beach instantly.

��Chang-kan is a suburb of Nanking.

The Long Wind Beach, or Chang-feng SRa, is in An- hwei, several hundred miles up the river, from Nanking. It is really a long way. But by making the wife say that the way is not long, Li Po brings out the girlishness of the speaker.

Wang-fu means "husband watching" and more than one hill has taken that name because of a similar tra- dition of a forlorn wife who climbed the height to watch for the return of her husband.

Wei Sheng. 6th century B. C. He was a young man of fidelity. He promised to meet a girl under a bridge in Chang-an, and waited for her there. Though the girl did not appear and the river water was rising, he would not leave his post and was drowned. [152]

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