Tamashii wa
Uki-yo ni naite,
Semi no kara.
Here the forsaken shell: above me the voice of the creature
Shrills like the cry of a Soul quitting this world of pain.
Then the great sun-quickened tumult of the cicadae—landstorm of summer life foredoomed so soon to pass away—is likened by preacher and poet to the tumult of human desire. Even as the semi rise from earth, and climb to warmth and light, and clamor, and presently again return to dust and silence, — so rise and clamor and pass the generations of men:—
Yagate shinu
Keshiki wa miezu,
Semi no koe.—Bashō.
Never an intimation in all those voices of semi
How quickly the hush will come,—how speedily all must die.
I wonder whether the thought in this little verse does not interpret something of that summer melancholy which comes to us out of nature's solitudes with the plaint of insect-voices. Unconsciously those millions of millions of tiny beings are preaching the
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