Category: Li Bai

You ask how I spend my time–
I nestle against a treetrunk
and listen to autumn winds
in the pines all night and day.

Shantung wine can’t get me drunk.
The local poets bore me.
My thoughts

I was about to sail away in a junk,
When suddenly I heard
The sound of stamping and singing on the bank—
It was you and your friends come to bid me farewell.
The Peach Flower Lake

Under the crescent moon’s faint glow
The washerman’s bat resounds afar,
And the autumn breeze sighs tenderly.
But my heart has gone to the Tartar war,
To bleak Kansuh and the steppes of snow,
Calling my husband

Amongst bubbling streams
a dog barks; peach blossom
is heavy with dew; here
and there a deer can
be seen in forest glades!
No sound of the mid-day
bell enters this fastness
where blue mist rises
from

Life is a dream. No need to stir.
Remembering this I’m drunk all day.
Lying helpless beside the porch,
Waking to see the deep garden.
One bird calls among the flowers.
Ask myself what’s the season?
Song

Sunlight streams on the river stones.
From high above, the river steadily plunges–

three thousand feet of sparkling water–
the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.

Died for – North of the Rampart – (to an old tune)

We fought for Mulberry Springs
Die now for Garlic River.
Wash our swords in Parthian Seas,
Feed our mounts on T’ien Shan snows.
Thousands of

Drinking, I sit,
Lost to Night,
Keep falling petals
From the ground:
Get up to follow
The stream’s white moon,
No sign of birds,
The humans gone.

Misted the flowers weep as light dies
Moon of white silk sleeplessly cries.
Stilled – Phoenix wings.
Touched – Mandarin strings.

This song tells secrets that no one knows
To far Yenjan on Spring breeze it goes.

Chang-an — one slip of moon;
in ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets.
Autumn winds keep on blowing,
all things make me think of Jade Pass!
When will they put down the barbarians
and my