lines, of course with a variation of Japanese morality:
“The lesson writ in red since time first ran:
A hunter hunting down the beast in man;
That till the chasing but of its last vice,
The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.”
Yamato-Take subdued and pacified all the East; now reaching the moor of Yagi on the way home, he suddenly felt weak and exclaimed: “Whereas my heart always felt like flying through the sky, my legs are now unable to walk; they have become rudder-shaped.” Again at the village of Mike he exclaimed: “My legs are like threefold crooks, and very very weary.”
Then he pulled his tired body to the Moor of Nobo, and from his deep love of his native land, he exclaimed, singing:
“O Yamato, the most hidden of lands,
Yamato, snug within green hills,
The hills encompassing thee with their fences,
How delightful, O Yamato!”
And then he passed away, singing:
“Thou whose life may be strong,
Adorn thy hair, thou in health,
With the bear-oak leaves from Heguri Mount,
Be happy, my child!”
Such was the last song of this great spirit; when you compare it with the Japanese songs of a later age, you will see that our ancestors,
