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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Witter Bynner and Kiang Kung-hu, trans.

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

On the Way to the Temple

Witter Bynner and Kiang Kung-hu, trans.

From “Poems by Wang Wei”
From the Chinese

NOT knowing the way to the Temple of Heaped Fragrance,

I have roamed, under miles of mountain-cloud,

Old woods without a human track.

But far on the height I hear a bell,

A rillet sings over winding rocks,

The sun is tempered by green pines….

At twilight, close to an emptying pool,

I lie and master the Passion-dragon.