3rd Century Poems

Fragment on Bird-Catching

Nemesianus
Tunisian
c. 283

 

When the woodland everywhere is despoiled of its green honours, make straight for the deep forest, mounted on the snow-white housing of your steed. The snipe is an easy and agreeable prey. You will find it no larger in body than Venus’ doves. It feeds close to the edge of embankments, by the wash of the water, hunting tiny worms, its favourite fare. But its pursuit thereof is rather with keen-scented nose than with the eyes, in which its sense is rather dull, too big for the body though they be. With the point of the beak driven into the ground it drags out the little worms which needs must follow, therewith rewarding an appetite cheap to satisfy.

Emotion

Zhang Hua
Chinese
232 – 300

 

A pure breeze billows bed-curtains and blinds,
The moon of dawning lights the secluded room.
My husband is away on a distant journey,
The light of his face has gone from the orchid chamber.
I clutch the vacant shadows to my breast,
Only a light quilt covers the empty bed.
At the height of our joy, we grieved the nights were so short,
Now in my despair I resent the length of the dark.
I stroke my pillow, sigh in my loneliness,
Whelmed in sorrow, my heart is torn within me.

Translation by J.D. Frodsham

from The Art of Writing

Lu Ji
Chinese
261 – 303

 

Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud
that fall right into place, shot with arrows,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations,
rhymes underheard for a thousand years.
I won’t touch a flower already in morning bloom
but quicken the unopened evening buds.
In a blink I see today and the past,
put out my hand and touch all the seas.

Translation by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

Poem of Sorrow and Anger

Cai Yan
Chinese
178 – 249

My dwelling is often covered by frost and snow,
The foreign winds bring again spring and summer;

They gently blow into my robes,
And chillingly shrill into my ear;

Emotions stirred, I think of my parents,
Whilst I draw a long sigh of endless sorrows.

Whenever guests visit from afar,
I would often make joy of their tidings;

I lost no time in throwing eager questions,
Only to find that the guests were not from my home town.