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Meng Hao-jan (689–740) was one of the foremost poets of the T’ang and one of the few who did not pursue an official career. When Meng was forty, the retired prime minister, Chang Yueh, invited him to the western capital in Ch’ang-an to take the civil service exam. But Meng not only failed, he annoyed Emperor Hsuan-tsung as well, and he soon returned to his family estate outside Hsiangyang. When time permitted, and it usually did, Meng visited friends at their posts along the Yangtze or enjoyed the peace of the hermitage he built on Lumenshan, twenty kilometers southeast of his home. Five centuries earlier, the recluse P’ang Te-kung also built his hut on the same mountain. Like P’ang, Meng had little interest in worldly goals and preferred to sleep late—while his friends in the capital were at court before dawn. Even as winter becomes spring, Meng is still sleeping late and isn’t wakened by the sun but by the sound of birds beginning their spring courtship. Still, this too fails to drive him from his bed, and he is content to wonder about the scene outside without feeling the need to do anything about it.

Spring Dawn

MENG HAO-JAN

Sleeping in spring oblivious of dawn

everywhere I hear birds

after the wind and rain last night

I wonder how many petals fell