Sparrows and Camellia in Snow

Of the two versions of this design in the Art Institute's collection, this image is accepted as the earlier printing of this famous design. The poetry appearing on both impressions has been identified by the scholar Suzuki Juzo as the first two lines of an unsigned Chinese poem entitled “Inquiry of a Stork” by Hakurakuten (772–846). It reads:

Crows and storks fight over something to eat
and sparrows over where to sleep,
You stand there all alone by the pond,
the wind blows and snow piles up.