A Wife Mourns For Her Husband Poem by Confucius

The dolichos grows and covers the thorn,
O'er the waste is the dragon-plant creeping.
The man of my heart is away and I mourn--
What home have I, lonely and weeping?

Covering the jujubes the dolichos grows,
The graves many dragon-plants cover;
But where is the man on whose breast I'd repose?
No home have I, having no lover!

Fair to see was the pillow of horn,
And fair the bed-chamber's adorning;
But the man of my heart is not here, and I mourn
All alone, and wait for the morning.

While the long days of summer pass over my head,
And long winter nights leave their traces,
I'm alone! Till a hundred of years shall have fled,
And then I shall meet his embraces.

Through the long winter nights I am burdened with fears,
Through the long summer days I am lonely;
But when time shall have counted its hundreds of years
I then shall be his--and his only!