A Glimpse Of China. In A Sampan. by Francis William Laude...

A Glimpse Of China. In A Chair.

(Foo-chow.)


From the bright and blinding sunshine,
    From the whirling locust's song,
Into the dark and narrow fissures
    Of the streets I am borne along.

Here and there dusky-beaming
    A sun-shaft broadens and drops
On the brown bare crowd slow-passing
    The crowd of the open shops.

We move on over the bridges
    With their straight-hewn blocks of stone.
And their quaint grey animal figures,
    And the booths the hucksters own.

Behind a linen awning
    Sits an ancient wight half-dead,
And a little dear of a girl is
    Examining - his head.

On a bended bamboo shouldered,
    Bearing a block of stone,
Two worn-out coolies half-naked
    Utter their grunting groan.

Children, al...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Sampan Song

A little breeze blew over the sea,
    And it came from far away,
Across the fields of millet and rice,
All warm with sunshine and sweet with spice,
It lifted his curls and kissed him thrice,
    As upon the deck he lay.

It said, "Oh, idle upon the sea,
    Awake and with sleep have done,
Haul up the widest sail of the prow,
And come with me to the rice fields now,
She longs, oh, how can I tell you how,
    To show you your first-born son!"

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

In The Shadows

I am sailing to the leeward,
Where the current runs to seaward
        Soft and slow,
Where the sleeping river grasses
Brush my paddle as it passes
        To and fro.

On the shore the heat is shaking
All the golden sands awaking
        In the cove;
And the quaint sand-piper, winging
O'er the shallows, ceases singing
        When I move.

On the water's idle pillow
Sleeps the overhanging willow,
        Green and cool;
Where the rushes lift their burnished
Oval heads from out the tarnished
        Emerald pool.

Where the very silence slumbers,
Water lilies grow in numbers,
        Pure and pale;
All the morning they have rested,
Amber crowned, and pearly crested,
        Fair and frail.

Here, impo...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Fisherman. (Mindanao, Philippines.)

In the dark waveless sea,
    Deep blue under deep blue,
The fisher drifts by on the tide
    In his small pole-balanced canoe.

Above him the cloud-clapped hills
    Crown the dense jungly sweeps;
The cocoa-nut groves hedge round
    The hut where the beach-wave sleeps.

Is it not better so
    To be as this savage is,
Than to live the wage-slave's life
    Of hopeless agonies?

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Chinatown-I

    As they are crawling up to you
    think of Angor Wat
    the sweating walls
    cold in stone
    steam broiling in the jungle;
    or, that most ancient of men,
    the Chinese beggar
    the thin rinds of his skin
    like scented apples or
    kimonos slipped off to dry

Paul Cameron Brown

A Summer Evening Scene in Chateauguay

    Written In Montreal.

    Often, when the sun is sinking
        O'er the mountain's glowing crest,
    When the earth and heaven are linking
        In that bond of peaceful rest;
    Then, the weary city spurning,
        On this grand repose I gaze,
    And my mind, in fancy turning,
        Dwells on scenes of childhood's days.

    And I float upon the river
        At the selfsame time of day,
    When the sparkling waters quiver
        'Neath the slanting evening ray.
    Day's harsh memories forsaking
        With its jarring and its jest,
    For the soul is but awaking
        As the day is lulled to rest.

    Glimpse of even's glory getting
        As the summer sun serene,
    In his softened splendour setting,

W. M. MacKeracher

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A Glimpse Of China. In A Sampan.

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