"Elegy" and Longfellow's "Psalm of Life." Shakespeare is represented by four extracts, and Charles Kingsley by his "Three Fishers."
The original poems include verses written before the colossal image of Buddha at Kamakura, an ode to the four seasons, and a war-song. Neither the original poems nor the translations have striking merit in themselves, but they attracted a large measure of public attention, and gave rise to a lively controversy between the adherents of the old and new styles. They also produced a school of imitators, among whom the novelist Yamada was one of the most eminent.
More recently (1891) Toyama, the chief originator of the movement, brought out a poem on the great earthquake of 1855, which has not only considerable merit in itself, but occupies a unique position in Japanese literature as a descriptive poem of some length.
Dr. Florenz, writing in 1892, says that 1888 may be taken as the culminating point of the favour shown to the new style of poetry. A reaction then set in, which, however, was of short duration. The last two or three years have produced a considerable quantity of verse more or less in the new form, of which all that can now be said is that, on a hasty examination, it reveals some promising features. Regularity of form is more carefully attended to—a great desideratum in the longer kinds of Japanese poetry.
The day of Tanka and Haikai seems to have passed. These miniature forms of poetry are now the exception and not the rule.
The following specimen, which may be taken as characteristic of the vague and dreamy style of most recent Japanese poetry, is translated from a little volume
