The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [83]
Then set it down and listen to what I say.
Do not sigh that your home is far away,
Do not mind that success seems far away.
Only hope that as long as life lasts
You and I may never be forced to part.
23
There is silence over the peaks.
In all the treetops there is peace;
Hardly a breath of wind.
The birds are silent and still.
Nothing moves, not a dry leaf
Stirs on the grass,
Not a single soft plume of thistle
Floats.
Only wait: soon
You too will rest.
24
Below the hall, beside the steps,
The pine trees grow in irregular array,
Without order, some tall and some low,
The tallest ten roods tall, the lowest ten feet low.
They are like wild things; no one knows who planted them.
They touch the walls of my blue-tiled house,
Their roots are deep in the terrace of white sand.
Every night they are visited by wind and moonlight,
Rain or fine they are free from dust.
In the autumn gales they whisper a private tune,
In the summer sunlight they yield a cool shade.
At the height of spring the fine evening rain
Decorates their leaves with hanging pearls.
At the year’s end, the time of great snow
Burdens their branches with glittering jade.
When the people heard I had bought this house
They mocked, and called me mad
To move all my family here for the sake of a few pines.
And still I hurry to business, my belt buckled
And my sandals covered in dust;
And from time to time my heart reproves me
That I am not fit to be master of my own pine trees,
Who teach their lessons in each season of the year.
25
We had ridden long and were still far from the inn;
My eyes grew dim, and for some moments I dozed.
In my right hand the whip dangled,
In my left hand the reins slackened.
Suddenly I woke and turned to my groom,
Who told me that I slept for ten paces.
Body and mind had changed places;
Swift and slow had turned to their contraries.
For those few steps as I swayed in the saddle
My dream had lasted through aeons of time:
True indeed is the saying of the wise,
That a thousand years are but a moment of sleep.
26
The sun’s early light shines on my house-beams,
The first banging of open doors
Echoes like a drumroll in the courtyard.
The dog lies curled on the stone step
Because the ground is still wet with dew.
On my window sill the birds chatter
To announce that the day is fine.
With lingering fumes of last night’s wine
My head is still heavy;
With new doffing of winter garments
My body feels light and free.
27
I sought the hermit among the mountain pines
And by the brook that rises there.
I asked a child fishing on its bank;
He said, ‘My master has gone to seek for herbs,
He is on this mountain, certainly,
But you cannot see him because of the clouds.’
28
By woods and water, whose houses are these
With high gates and wide-stretching meadows?
From their blue gables gilded fishes hang,
By their red pillars carved courses run.
Their spring arbours, warm with caged mist,
Their autumn yards cold with moonlight,
To the stem of the pine tree amber beads cling;
The willow oozes ruby-red drops.
Who are the masters of these estates?
They are state officers, counsellors and courtiers;
All their lives they have never seen what they own,
But know their possessions from a bailiff’s map only.
29
The western wind has just begun to blow,
Yet already the first leaf flies from the bough.
On the drying paths I walk in my summer shoes,
In the first touch of cold I don my quilted coat.
Through shallow ditches the floods seep away,
Through sparse osiers a slanting light gleams.
In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
The garden-boy is leading the geese home.
30
I have finished with burdens and ties. No changes
Disturb the quiet of my mind, or impair my rest.
For ten years now body and mind
Have rested in hermit peace.
And all the more, in these last lingering years,
What I shall need is little:
A single rug to keep me warm in winter,
One meal to last me through the day.
No matter that my house is small;
One cannot sleep in two rooms at once!
No