The Country Girl
T’ai Wang-Shu

The country girl she quietly tripped along
Carrying a bucket green with lichen,
Her feet were sprinkled by the splashing water,
Her heart was under the willow by the well.

The girl would quietly walk to her old cottage
Under the centenarian evergreen
But when she thought of the boy who had kissed her by the well,
She would smile and purse her lips.

Towards her cottage turning,
She would scare to flight a flock of pecking sparrows,
Quietly she would walk into the kitchen
And quietly drop the bucket by the hay.

She would help her mother to prepare the meal
And her father, back from the fields, would sit and smoke;
She would feed the pigs and drive the fowls to roost.

At dinner in the twilight
Her father would discourse on this year’s harvest,
Mutter some words anent his daughter’s marriage—
Then, timidly, the girl would bend her head.

Her mother would complain of her laziness
(That dallying by the well was an example)
But she never even heard her mother’s speech;
She was thinking the boy had been a little rough.