Inconstancy.
My heart to body
Fuel to engine;
Thy heart an air-ship
Loose in the sky.
Here the similes are plain and forcible. The next poem is less lucid:
Despair.
Borne in no road-car,
Endless the railway,
How shall poor I reach
Station at last?
Literally: "Riding in no vehicle (which is used for a short journey), the train whithersoever going (for an indefinite distance), By doing what shall this body of mine, Terminus?" That is: My love is not a short-lived fancy, but a lifelong passion, until I reach the terminus of death. Graceful, indeed, but scarcely gracious is a lady's reply to an admirer who had sent her his photograph:
The Higher Photography.
Only your likeness!
Faithful? I know not.
Could I but take one,
Too, of your heart!
The double meaning of a "faithful" likeness and a "faithful" lover can, for once, be preserved in English. A pun on the word tokeru, which means "to melt" and "to be undone," is allied with a dainty antithesis in
Dissolution.
White snow of Fuji
Loosened at sunrise;
Maiden's shimada
Loosened for sleep.
