The Five Old Men Peaks
Hsu Chih-Mo

The unshakable miracle,
The dazzling dignity,
The high uprising, the dragon-coiling,
The inaccessible steep.
Behold! through a crevice there
The sky peeps in, that blue remote and profound.
In the embrace of the infinite
The wonder hugely surges into sight.

Whose ideal and whose imagination,
Whose labour, the traces of whose creative hands
In a void antique and divine,
Now mock the heavenly mists and winds and bodies?
Sometimes clusters of glittering comely clouds,
Quivering faintly, adorn their silver locks
Like an old twisted plum-tree, branches writhing
And blossoms yielding sudden fragrances.

The boys who fell timber down the mountain-side
Bathe and shout in the crystal stream.
They recognize the old men’s moody faces.
The rolling mists like foam upon the ocean
Cover and drown the green woods in the valley
And screen the ruffled waters of the lake.
Lightning flashes on crag and cliff, O listen!
The five old men are chuckling over the misty sea.

The rosy morn illuminates their clefts,
On their bald patches the sunset lingers;
At eve they hear the trills of curious birds.
Above their Chiu Pan shoulders timidly
Moonlight and stars appear,
Ships lightly, slowly sailing on soft waves.
Hark to the peaceful surf-becalming bell!
Pilgrims pass through the forest of fallen leaves.

O care no more for worldly vanities,
Nor heed the woes and nightmares of the earth,
My soul! inhale the free air of the mountain,
Its grandeur and its magnanimity!
These are not peaks, but prayers of old saints
Into these temples crystallized like music,
To give the world a proof of immortality—
An “obstinate question” from the infinite skies!