n cream and pigeon in soy-ed,
With a brown noodle of pork and prawn,
And a curry of fish and a large Chung Goun,
Sweet onions, and black eggs and chow chow.
And when we have done,
We will have cakes and tea, and music and songs,
And call in our white friends to sit with us.

For this one day we shall be each to the other,
What the other would desire.
Perhaps it is well that this day
Occurs but once in the year's calendar;
For if we always so behaved, one to the other,
There would be no business done.

Directions for Making Tea

In making tchah for table, each man has his own way.
Some serve it dashed with lemon, and some with bamboo shoot,
And some with sugar, in the English way,
And some with spot of sam-shu.;
But when one offers tchah to distinguished visitor,
One offers the noble suey sen, and flavors it
With the dried bud of the noble chrysanthemum.

Consider these verses, little friend,
As cups of suey sen
Flavoured with the buds of the flower of all flowers.

Of Inaccessible Beauty

Ladies in elegant silks and laces
Have come at times to my insignificant shop,
For pieces of jade, or banners, or curious cuttings of ivory.
And I look with insufferable emotion
Upon their roseleaf skin,
And breathe the soft scents that flow from their garments,
And long to soothe their lily-fingered hands.
In their presence
I am seized with longings unutterable,
And am filled with a sickness of my present unkind estate.

But then I remember
That Beauty's not always a star,
Not always remote, not always in lofty places,
Chrysanthemum-clad and lily-sheathed;
But often lies in the hedges
And peeps from street-corners
And lurks shyly behind broken doorways.

And I think upon the kind and considerate beauty
Of the maid with the golden curls,
And her patched, uncoloured robes of common cloth.
And with a change of mood I charge the elegant ladies
Three times the value of the articles chosen,
And thus tear from their flowery bodies
Pieces of their billowing silk
To deck the less fervid beauty of my friend.

Night and Day

The waters of the river flow swiftly at Limehouse Hole,
Past wharves, and ugly gardens,
Past beautiful steel ships and tawny sails,
Past clamorous factories and broken boats and bells.

Throughout the day these things are one--
One body of dire endeavour.
But when the ev