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.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragments of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatter away.
[Many of the above poems have been translated before, in some cases by
three or four different hands. But III. 4, III. 26, XV. 2, and XXIII. 9
are, so far as I know, translated for the first time.]