Li Po Poems

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
...

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
...

I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
...

Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
...

The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.

The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
...

If heaven loved not the wine,
A Wine Star would not be in heaven;
If earth loved not the wine,
The Wine Spring would not be on the earth.
...

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
...

I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.

Under the shade of his big straw hat
...

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,
And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.
Which was the real—the butterfly or the man ?
Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?
...

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
...