LI BAI QUOTES
Chinese poet (701-762)
My thoughts of longing are like the smoke grass,
That grows always in profusion, winter or spring!
LI BAI
"To His Three Friends"
Palace women like blossoms filled springtime galleries here.
There's nothing left now--only quail breaking into flight.
LI BAI
"Gazing Into Antiquity In Yueh"
Gods have bestowed our genius on us;
They will also find its use some day.
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
Now let you and me buy wine today!
Why say we have not the price?
My horse spotted with five flowers,
My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold,
These I will take out, and call my boy
To barter them for sweet wine.
And with you twain, let me forget
The sorrow of ten thousand ages!
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
A river town. The autumn rain has stopped.
Our wine is gone. So, farewell!
LI BAI
"At a River Town"
Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Mountain,
Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?
How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!
You must have been suffering from poetry again.
LI BAI
"Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu"
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
LI BAI
"The Old Dust"
My life is a wasted thing,
My garden and fields have long been buried under weeds.
What am I to do so late in my years
But sing away and let alone the imperial gate of gold?
LI BAI
"In the Spring-time on the South Side of the Yangtze Kiang"
We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.
LI BAI
Banished Immortal
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was....
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us.
LI BAI
"A Mountain Revelry"
The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
LI BAI
"The Old Dust"
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other--
Only the mountain and I.
LI BAI
"Alone Looking at the Mountain"
Your nobility looms up like a high mountain,
Too high for others to attain to;
But they may breathe the rare fragrance
That your soul imparts.
LI BAI
"To Meng Hao-Jan"
Since the days of old, the wise and the good
Have been left alone in their solitude,
While merry drinkers have achieved enviable fame.
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
When the hunter sets traps only for rabbits, tigers and dragons are left uncaught.
LI BAI
"To His Three Friends"
I sing, the wild moon wanders the sky.
I dance, my shadow goes tumbling about.
While we're awake, let us join in carousal;
Only sweet drunkenness shall ever part us.
Let us pledge a friendship no mortals know,
And often hail each other at evening
Far across the vast and vaporous space!
LI BAI
"Three With the Moon and His Shadow"
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves,
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea.
LI BAI
"The Hard Road"
I desire only the long ecstasy of wine,
And desire not to awaken.
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
Here it is night: I stay at the Summit Temple.
Here I can touch the stars with my hand.
I dare not speak aloud in the silence
For fear of disturbing the dwellers of Heaven.
LI BAI
"The Summit Temple"
Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.
LI BAI
"Awakening From Sleep on a Spring Day"