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(From Guests of the State)
WHAT shall we call | |
| This Curious One, who builded a great wall, | |
| That, rivers crossing, skirting mountain steeps, | |
| Did not keep out, but let in, the Invader; | |
| Who is what her ancients made her; | 5 |
| Who neither wholly wakes, nor wholly sleeps, | |
| Fool at once and sage, | |
| Childhood of more than patriarchal age? | |
| With twinkling, almond eyes, and little feet, | |
| She totters hither, from her fields of flowers, | 10 |
| From where Pekin uplifts its pictured towers, | |
| And from the markets where her merchants meet | |
| And barter with the world. We close our eyes, | |
| And see her otherwise. | |
| (Perhaps the spell began | 15 |
| With the quaint figures on her painted fan.) | |
| At first she is a Land, | |
| A stretch of plains and mountains, and long rivers, | |
| Down which her inland tribute she delivers | |
| To the sea cities: where a child may stand, | 20 |
| A man may climb, plants are, and shrubs, and trees; | |
| Arable everywhere, | |
| No idlers there | |
| In that vast hive-world of industrious bees! | |
| Now she is many persons, many things, | 25 |
| The little and the great: | |
| The Emperor ploughing in the Sacred Field, | |
| What time the New-Year comes in solemn state; | |
| A soldier, with his matchlock, bow, and shield, | |
| Behind the many-bannered dragon wings; | 30 |
| A bonze, where the high pagodas rise, | |
| And Buddha sits, cross-legged, in rapt repose; | |
| A husbandman that goes | |
| And sows his fallow fields with barley, wheat, | |
| And gathers in his harvests, dries his tea; | 35 |
| Hunter, from whom the silver pheasant flies; | |
| Boatman, whose boat floats downward to the sea; | |
| Sailor, whose junk is clumsy; woodman, who | |
| Cuts camphor-trees and groves of tall bamboo; | |
| Gardens, wherein the zones like sisters meet, | 40 |
| Where bud and flower and fruit together grow, | |
| The banyan and pomegranate, and the palm, | |
| And the great water-lily, white as snow; | |
| Rivers, with low squat bridges; everywhere | |
| Women and children; beardless men, with queues, | 45 |
| In tunics, short wide trousers, silken shoes, | |
| Some with the peakéd caps of Mandarins; | |
| Behold the ruby button burning there, | |
| And yonder severed head that ghastly grins; | |
| Old hillside tombs, where mourners still repair; | 50 |
| Innumerous bustle, immemorial calm,— | |
| And this is China! | |
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