Green Gully - Wang Wei

If I want to reach Yellow Flower river
I always Follow Green Gully stream;
It coils through the mountains
      with ten thousand turnings,
Hurrying along
      it barely covers a hundred li.
What a clamour it makes among the jumbled rocks!
Deep in the pinewoods
      how quiet and still it seems.
Adrift with water-chestnuts, lightly swaying,
Translucently it mirrors reeds and rushes . . .
      My heart is free and at peace,
      As tranquil as this clear stream.
      Let me stay on some great rock
      And trail my fishing-hook for ever!

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Wang Wei (699 - 759) China
Source: Chinese Love Poetry, edited by Jane Portal, British Museum Press (2004)