Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/366

Not a day elapses in which some one does not pass to exile here. Dew [of tears] follows upon dew, one smoke [of cremation] succeeds another without an interval. The lines—

'The name remains, the form has vanished,The bones beneath the fir-clad moundAre changed to ashes in the grassy mead'—

must have been said of some such place as this. An utterly wild and dismal moor it was, the deep grass drenched with dew, and here and there a bleached bone showing among it. A weird, uncanny spot indeed, fit to inspire such sentiments as those of the poet, who says—

'He is gone to his long home,And we who now returnWill one day follow himOn the rugged pathThat leads to Hades.While in such gloomy thoughts immersed,The moon glimmering through the smoke [of cremation]Seems like a crag of the Eagle's Mount.' ^[1]

"Well, then, our pilgrim Sonematsu, brushing away the dew from the moss below an ancient fir-tree, put down his portable shrine. It was the season of the festival of the dead, so by way of a fire to light their path from Hades [the dead are supposed to revisit the earth at this time], he gathered some leaves and kindled them, the dew upon them standing for the offering of water. Then turning to the Buddha of the shrine which he carried with him, and striking his bell, he recited the prayer for the dead. Whilst he was thus deep in his devotions, the

1. A mountain in India where Buddha preached—put for the other world.