CHAPTER XVII
FLOWER FESTIVALS
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”—Emerson.
“ ’Tis not the gift which marks the festival,
Nor lights nor garlands make the holiday,
The happy mind in working is at play;
Spring’s herald-bird brings summer on its wing;
The heart’s the happy day’s best madrigal.”
No country on earth has more poetic reasons for its holidays and fêtes than has Japan. If they are not deliberate rejoicings over the perfection of some flower—as in the case of the festivals of the Cherry, the Chrysanthemum, the Maple—they are so adorned by, and inextricably mixed with, the blooms of the day they celebrate that we can hardly distinguish between the offerings on the altar and the decorations there.
When Japan ceased to hold to her ancient calendar, and reckoned time no longer as China does, but as Western nations do, part of the meaning of these holidays disappeared. But, as the perfume of the blooms tells the poet that he is once more at his old home, although in the
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