On A Picture Screen

by Li Bai

　　Have they flown into the gorgeous screen

　　From heaven's one corner?

　　Ah, those lonely pines murmuring in the wind!

　　Those palaces of Yang-tai, hovering yonder
Oh, the melancholy of it!

　　Where the jeweled couch of the king

　　With brocade covers is desolate,

　　His elfin maid voluptuously fair

　　Still haunting them in vain!

　　Here a few feet

　　Seem a thousand miles.

　　The craggy walls glisten blue and red,

　　A piece of dazzling embroidery.

　　How green those distant trees are

　　Round the river strait of Ching-men!

　　And those ships they go on,

　　Floating on the waters of Pa.

　　The water sings over the rocks

　　Between countless hills

　　Of shining mist and lustrous grass.

　　How many years since these valley flowers bloomed

　　To smile in the sun ?

　　And that man traveling on the river,

　　Hears he not for ages the monkeys screaming?

　　Whoever looks on this,

　　Loses himself in eternity;

　　And entering the sacred mountains of Sung,

　　He will dream among the resplendent clouds.

　　Li Po