 |
| TAO 78, translated by Stephen Mitchell |
 |
| Tao 43, translated by Stephen Mitchell |
From: “Portrait of a Lady” by T. S. Eliot
II
Now that lilacs are in bloom | |
| She has a bowl of lilacs in her room | |
| And twists one in her fingers while she talks. | |
| “Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know | |
| What life is, you who hold it in your hands”; | 45 |
| (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks) | |
| “You let it flow from you, you let it flow, | |
| And youth is cruel, and has no remorse | |
| And smiles at situations which it cannot see.” | |
| I smile, of course, | 50 |
| And go on drinking tea. | |
| “Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall | |
| My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, | |
| I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world | |
| To be wonderful and youthful, after all.” ********** |
