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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Witter Bynner and Kiang Kung-hu, trans.

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Answering Vice-prefect Chang

Witter Bynner and Kiang Kung-hu, trans.

From “Poems by Wang Wei”
From the Chinese

AS the years go by, give me but peace,

Freedom from ten thousand matters.

I ask myself and always answer,

What can be better than coming home?

A wind from the pine-trees blows my sash,

And my lute is bright with the mountain-moon.

You ask me about good and evil?…

Hark, on the lake there’s a fisherman singing!