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    Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior
    Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior
    Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior
    Ebook58 pages35 minutes

    Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior

    By Eunice Tietjens

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior

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      Book preview

      Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior - Eunice Tietjens

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, Profiles from China, by Eunice Tietjens

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Profiles from China

      Author: Eunice Tietjens

      Release Date: August 5, 2004 [eBook #13118]

      Language: English

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROFILES FROM CHINA***

      E-text prepared by Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

      PROFILES FROM CHINA

      Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior

      by

      EUNICE TIETJENS

      1917

      To My Mother

      CONTENTS

      PROEM

        The Hand

      FROM THE INTERIOR

        Cormorants

        A Scholar

        The Story Teller

        The Well

        The Abandoned God

        The Bridge

        The Shop

        My Servant

        The Feast

        The Beggar

        Interlude

        The City Wall

        Woman

        Our Chinese Acquaintance

        The Spirit Wall

        The Most-Sacred Mountain

        The Dandy

        New China: The Iron Works

        Spring

        Meditation

        Chinese New Year

      ECHOES

        Crepuscule

        Festival of the Dragon Boats

        Kang Yi

        Poetics

        A Lament of Scarlet Cloud

        The Son of Heaven

        The Dream

        Fêng-Shui

      CHINA OF THE TOURISTS

        Reflections in a Ricksha

        The Camels

        The Connoisseur: An American

        Sunday in the British Empire: Hong Kong

        On the Canton River Boat

        The Altar of Heaven

        The Chair Ride

        The Sikh Policeman: a British Subject

        The Lady of Easy Virtue: an American

        In the Mixed Court: Shanghai

      Proem

      Profiles from China

      The Hand

      As you sit so, in the firelight, your hand is the color of

          new bronze.

      I cannot take my eyes from your hand;

      In it, as in a microcosm, the vast and shadowy Orient

          is made visible.

      Who shall read me your hand?

      You are a large man, yet it is small and narrow, like the

          hand of a woman and the paw of a chimpanzee.

      It is supple and boneless as the hands wrought in pigment

          by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering

          fingers bend backward.

      Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it

          with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the

          eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved

          nail is fastidiousness made flesh.

      Very skilful is your hand.

      With a tiny brush it can feather lines of ineffable suggestion,

          glints of hidden beauty. With a little

          tool it can carve strange dreams in ivory and

          milky jade.

      And cruel is your hand.

      With the same cold daintiness and skill it can devise

          exquisite tortures, eternities of incredible pain,

          that Torquemada never glimpsed.

      And voluptuous is your hand, nice in its sense of touch.

      Delicately it can caress a quivering skin, softly it can

          glide over golden thighs…. Bilitis had not

          such long nails.

      Who can read me your hand? In the firelight the smoke curls up fantastically from the cigarette between your fingers which are the color of new bronze. The room is

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