At all events it is going to be hot here.

  The Village of the Mud Idols

The City Wall

About the city where I dwell, guarding it close, runs
    an embattled wall. 
It was not new I think when Arthur was a king, and
    plumed knights before a British wall made brave
    clangor of trumpets, that Launcelot came forth. 
It was not new I think, and now not it but chivalry is
    old.

Without, the wall is brick, with slots for firing, and it
    drops straightway into the evil moat, where offal
    floats and nameless things are thrown. 
Within, the wall is earth; it slants more gently down,
    covered with grass and stubbly with cut weeds. 
    Below it in straw lairs the beggars herd, patiently
    whining, stretching out their sores. 
And on the top a path runs.

As I walk, lifted above the squalor and the dirt, the
    timeless miracle of sunset mantles in the west,
The blue dusk gathers close
And beauty moves immortal through the land. 
And I walk quickly, praying in my heart that beauty
    will defend me, will heal up the too great wounds
    of China.

I will not look—­to-night I will not look—­where at
    my feet the little coffins are,
The boxes where the beggar children lie, unburied
    and unwatched. 
I will not look again, for once I saw how one was
    broken, torn by the sharp teeth of dogs.  A little
    tattered dress was there, and some crunched
    bones.... 
I need not look.  What can it help to look?

Ah, I am past! 
And still the sunset glows. 
The tall pagoda, like a velvet flower, blossoms against
    the sky; the Sacred Mountain fades, and in the
    town a child laughs suddenly. 
I will hold fast to beauty!  Who am I, that I should
    die for these?

I will go down.  I am too sorely hurt, here on the
    city wall.

  Wusih

Woman

Strangely the sight of you moves me. 
I have no standard by which to appraise you; the outer
    shell of you is all I know. 
Yet irresistibly you draw me.

Your small plump body is closely clad in blue brocaded
    satin.  The fit is scrupulous, yet no woman’s figure
    is revealed.  You are decorously shapeless. 
Your satin trousers even are lined with fur. 
Your hair is stiff and lustrous as polished ebony, bound
    at the neck in an adamantine knot, in which dull
    pearls are encrusted.