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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Arthur Waley, trans.

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Pedlar of Spells

Arthur Waley, trans.

From “Chinese Poems”

Lu Yu—Twelfth Century

AN OLD man selling charms in a cranny of the town-wall.

He writes out spells to bless the silk-worms and spells to protect the corn.

With the money he gets each day he only buys wine;

Nor does he worry when his legs wobble,

For he has a boy to lean on.