The pattering rain on the empty steps quickens at night.
Frost breaks through the thin walls and the broken window.
The flying wind trembles in the slender lamp flame.
I, the old man, stand alone by a shelf of books.
Often I take books to read, and then put them back
And walk away from my room, scratching my snow-thatched head.
Daily the town inn sells a thousand gallons of wine.
The people are happy; then why should you be sad?
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, September 07, 2008
Why Should You Be Sad?
Lu Yu, The Night Rain (tr. Pai Chwen-Yu):