Page:A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919).djvu/196

Where clouds are dark and the moon black and the sands eddy in the wind.
Frightened, I sheltered at the Green Grave,^[1] where the frozen grasses are few:
Stealthily I crossed the Yellow River, at night, on the thin ice,
Suddenly I heard Han^[2] drums and the sound of soldiers coming:
I went to meet them at the road-side, bowing to them as they came.
But the moving horsemen did not hear that I spoke the Han tongue:
Their Captain took me for a Tartar born and had me bound in chains.
They are sending me away to the south-east, to a low and swampy land:
No one now will take pity on me: resistance is all in vain.
Thinking of this, my voice chokes and I ask of Heaven above,
Was I spared from death only to spend the rest of my years in sorrow?
My native village of Liang-yüan I shall not see again:
My wife and children in the Tartars' land I have fruitlessly deserted.
When I fell among Tartars and was taken prisoner, I pined for the land of Han:
Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into a Tartar.

1. The grave of Chao-chün, a Chinese girl who in 33 B. C. was "bestowed upon the Khan of the Hsiung-nu as a mark of Imperial regard" [Giles]. Hers was the only grave in this desolate district on which grass would grow.
2. I.e., Chinese.

 

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