Famous Poems About Tea

 Poems from Lu Tung's The Song of Tea:

Poem 1
I was lying lost in slumber as the morning sun climbed high,
When my dreams were shattered by a thunderous knocking at the door.
An officer had brought a letter from the imperial censor,
Its three great seals slanting across the white silk cover.
Opening it, I read some words that brought him vividly to mind.
He wrote that he was sending three hundred catties of moon-shaped cakes of tea,
For a road had been cut at the year's beginning to a special tea garden -
Such tea! And plucked so early in the year, when insects had scarcely begun their chatter,
When spring breezes had just begun to blow
And spring flowers dared not open,
As the emperor still awaited
The annual toll of Yang-Hsien tea!

Poem 2
Ah, how wonderful that tea, plucked ere the kindly breeze
Had swept away the pearling frost upon its leaves
And the tiny leaf-buds shone like gold!
Being packed when fresh and redolent of firing,
Its essential goodness had been cherished, instead of wasted.
Such tea was intended for the court and high nobility;
How had it reached the hut of a humble mountain-dweller?

Poem 3
To honor the tea, I shut my brushwood gate,
Lest common folk intrude,
And donned my gauze cup
To brew and taste it on my own.

Poem 4
The first bowl sleekly moistened my throat and lips;
The second banished all my loneliness;
The third expelled the dullness from my mind,
Sharpening inspiration gained from all the books I've read.
The fourth brought forth light perspiration,
Dispersing a lifetime's troubles through my pores.
The fifth bowl cleansed every atom of my being.
The sixth has made me kin to the Immortals.
This seventh is the utmost I can drink.

Poem 5
Where are those Isles of Immortals whither I am bound?
I, Master Jade Spring, will ride upon this breeze
To the place where the Immortals alight upon the earth,
Guarded by their divinity from wind and rain.
How can I bear the fate of countless beings
Born to bitter toil amid the towering peaks?
I must ask Censor Meng if he can tell
Whether those beings will ever be allowed to rest.

Other Poems About Tea

By Cheng Pan-Ch'iao - Ching Dynasty

Moonlight o'er the hills
Reflected on my balcony.
The night is young,
My rustic gate ajar,
Through the woods,
My friend approaches,
Lantern bobbing.
Smoke curls above the stove',
I call for tea.
The autumn stars have paled,
Barking of wakening dogs,
Sadness of flute-wind earned.
And still we sit and talk.
The sky now lightens,
Rosy clouds and chilly dew,
The earth moss-covered.

Hui Tsung "Tea Emperor" - Sung Dynasty

I still recall the splendors of my jade-like capital,
My home as ruler of those boundless territories,
The Forest of Coral and the Hall of Jade
The morning levees, the evening music.
Now the people of that beauteous city
Have fled its lonely solitude.
How remote were those youthful dreams of mine
>From this sad Mongolian wilderness!
Ah, where are the hills of my homeland!
I must bear the cacophony of barbarous flutes
Blowing piercingly among the plum blossom.