Li Po Approaches Last Call

“Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,

No friends at hand, so I poured alone;

I raised my cup to invite the moon,

Turned to my shadow, and we became three.”

Li Po,“Drinking Alone in the Midnight” (eighth cent.) (translation by Elling Eide)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.