The Pine Trees in the Courtyard

More Translations from the Chinese, by Arthur Waley, [1919], at sacred-texts.com

p. 74

[43] THE PINE-TREES IN THE COURTYARD

(A.D. 820)

    Below the hall
The pine-trees grow in front of the steps,
Irregularly scattered,—not in ordered lines.
    Some are tall and some are low:
The tallest of them is six roods high;
    The lowest but ten feet.
    They are like wild things
    And no one knows who planted them.
They touch the walls of my blue-tiled house;
Their roots are sunk in the terrace of white sand.
Morning and evening they are visited by the wind and moon;
Rain or fine,—they are free from dust and mud.
In the gales of autumn they whisper a vague tune;
From the suns of summer they yield a cool shade.
At the height of spring the fine evening, rain
Fills their leaves with a load of hanging pearls.
At the year's end the time of great snow
Stamps their branches with a fret of glittering jade.
Of the Four Seasons each has its own mood;
Among all the trees none is like another.
Last year, when they heard I had bought this house,
Neighbours mocked and the World called me mad—
That a whole family of twice ten souls
Should move house for the sake of a few pines!
Now that I have come to them, what have they given me?

p. 75

They have only loosened the buckles of my care.
Yet even so, they are "profitable friends," ¹
And fill my need of "converse with wise men."
Yet when I consider how, still a man of the world,
In belt and cap I scurry through dirt and dust,
From time to time my heart twinges with shame
That I am not fit to be master of my pines!

Footnotes

75:1 See "Analects of Confucius" 4 and 5, where three kinds of "profitable friends" and three kinds of "profitable pleasures" are described; the third of the latter being "plenty of intelligent companions."