Chinese Poet Among Barbarians

The rain drives, drives endlessly,
  Heavy threads of rain;
  The wind beats at the shutters,
  The surf drums on the shore;
  Drunken telegraph poles lean sideways;
  Dank summer cottages gloom hopelessly;
  Bleak factory-chimneys are etched on the filmy distance,
  Tepid with rain.
  It seems I have lived for a hundred years
  Among these things;
  And it is useless for me now to make complaint against them.
  For I know I shall never escape from this dull barbarian country,
  Where there is none now left to lift a cool jade winecup,
  Or share with me a single human thought.