Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/194

(Then, without any warning of type or otherwise, there follows a passage which in metre, diction, and sentiment is essentially poetry. It is not very original, however, much of it consisting of scraps of verse supplied by the author's memory from older writers.)

"But one night more and a strange lodging would be his,Far from Kadono, where in spring his steps had often wandered in the snow of the fallen cherry-flowers;Far from Arashiyama, whence on an autumn eve he was wont to return clad in the brocade of the red maple leaves—Despondent, his mind could think of nothing but his home, bound to him by the strongest ties of love,And of his wife and children, whose future was dark to him.'For the last time,' he thought, as he looked back on the ninefold Imperial city,For many a year his wonted habitation.How sad his heart must have been within himAs he set out on this unlooked-for journey!His sleeve wet in the fountain of the barrier of Osaka—No barrier, alas! to stay his sorrow—He sets forth over the mountain track to Uchide^[1] no hama, When from the shore he cast his glance afar over the wave."

Here the author becomes so involved in ingenious punning combinations of the names of places on the route with the thread of his story that it is impossible to follow him in a translation.

The following is one of the extraneous chapters of the Taiheiki. It describes in a very imaginative fashion the famous Mongol invasion of Japan by Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century of our era.

"Poring over the records of ancient times, in the leisure afforded me by the three superfluous things [night, winter, and rain], I find that since the Creation there have been seven invasions of Japan by foreign countries. The

1. Uchide means "to set forth," and hama, "shore."