through the little holes that were made by the fingers of her dead child.
The impossibility of preserving the inner quality of such poems in a literal rendering, will now be obvious. Whatever I attempt in this direction must of necessity be ittakkiri;—for the unspoken has to be expressed; and what the Japanese poet is able to say in seventeen or twenty-one syllables may need in English more than double that number of words. But perhaps this fact will lend additional interest to the following atoms of emotional expression:—
A Mother’s Remembrance
Sweet and clear in the night, the voice of a bay at study,
Reading out of a book…. I also once had a boy!
A Memory in Spring
She who, departing hence, left to the flowers of the plum-tree,
Blooming beside our eaves, the charm of her youth and beauty
And maiden pureness of heart, to quicken their flesh and fragrance,—
Ah! where does she dwell to-day, our dear little vanished sister?
Fancies of Another Faith
(1) I sought in the place of graves the tomb of my vanished friend:
From ancient cedars above there rippled a wild dove’s cry.
