Get Your Premium Membership

Li Bai Short Poems

Famous Short Li Bai Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Li Bai. A collection of the all-time best Li Bai short poems


by Li Bai
You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men.
- English Translation -



by Li Bai
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other - Only the mountain and I.
----------------------------------------------- The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

by Li Bai
Chang-an -- one slip of moon;
in ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets.
Autumn winds keep on blowing, all things make me think of Jade Pass! When will they put down the barbarians and my good man come home from his far campaign? - English Translation -

by Li Bai
I met Du Fu on a mountaintop

in August when the sun was hot.
Under the shade of his big straw hat his face was sad-- in the years since we last parted, he'd grown wane, exhausted.
Poor old Du Fu, I thought then, he must be agonizing over poetry again.

by Li Bai
Here he is, my good old friend!
He's at Yellow Crane Terrace on a western departure.
And--we're saying goodbye, goodbye.
He's in a cloud of third-month blossoms.
He's off downstream to Yang-chou.
That shadow there is his lonely sail.
Now there's nothing left of it.
All the blue is empty now.
All you can see is that long, long river.
It flows to the edge of the sky.



by Li Bai
From the walls of Baidi high in the coloured dawn

To Jiangling by night-fall is three hundred miles,

Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me

To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.

by Li Bai
 In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting,
scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang?
Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
who could help but long for the gardens of home?

by Li Bai
 Clouds bring back to mind her dress, the flowers her face.
Winds of spring caress the rail where sparkling dew-drops cluster.
If you cannot see her by the jewelled mountain top, Maybe on the moonlit Jasper Terrance you will meet her.

by Li Bai
A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off; And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting, Oh, go and ask this river running to the east If it can travel farther than a friend's love!

by Li Bai
Phoenixes that play here once, so that the place was named for them,
Have abandoned it now to this desolated river;
The paths of Wu Palace are crooked with weeds;
The garments of Chin are ancient dust.
.
.
.
Like this green horizon halving the Three Peaks, Like this Island of White Egrets dividing the river, A cloud has risen between the Light of Heaven and me, To hide his city from my melancholy heart.


Book: Shattered Sighs