“I thought, that day I started,I sure would hate to do this all my life,And dammit, that’s just whatI’ve gone and done.”

“I’m sixty-eight” he said, “I first bucked hay when I was seventeen. I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life. And dammit, that’s just what I’ve gone and done.”

“Damn me not I make a better fool. And there is nothing vaster, more beautiful, remote, unthinking (eternal rose-red sunrise on the surf—great rectitude of rocks) than man, inhuman man, At whom I look for a thousand light years from a seat near Scorpio, amazed and touched by his concern and pity for my plight, a simple star, Then trading shapes again. My wife is gone, my girl is gone, my books are loaned, my clothes are worn, I gave away a car; and all that happened years ago. Mind & matter, love & space are frail as foam on beer.”

“I wanted a good place to settle:Cold Mountain would be safe.Light wind in a hidden pine -Listen close - the sound gets better.Under it a gray haired manMumbles along reading Huang and Lao.For ten years I havn't gone back homeI've even forgotten the way by which I came.”

“I have lived at Cold MountainThese thirty long years.Yesterday I called on friends and family:More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;Forever flowing, like a passing river.Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.”

“I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train. It must have been a thousand years ago In some old mountain sawmill of Japan. A horde of excess poets and unwed girls And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear Tracking the human future Of intelligence and despair.”

“When men see Han-shanThey all say he's crazyAnd not much to look at -Dressed in rags and hides.They don't get what I sayAnd I don't talk their language.All I can say to those I meet:"Try and make it to Cold Mountain.”