China and the West

Yeats, W.B. Lapis Lazuli. In : Yeats, W.B. Eight poems. In : The London mercury ; vol. 37, no 221 (March 1938).
http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/777/.
http://dropo59.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/6-lapis-lazuli-william-butler-yeats/.
… Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.
Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
In 1935, the poet Harry Clifton gave his friend William Butler Yeats a stone carving of a Chinese scene.
Madison Morrison : Readers of the poem have sometimes been led, perhaps by Yeats's description of their eyes as 'ancient', to regard the Chinese figures as belonging to the past. But the figures for Yeats's are very much alive in the present.