Eines

COMPOSED WHEN THE POET COULD NOT CONTAIN HIMSELF FOR

JOY AT HAVING BEHELD IN A DREAM A FAVOURITE HAWK
THAT HE HAD LOST.*

Farthest of all the lands that own
The sov'reign monarch's might,
There lies a province wild and lone,
"Koshi the Snowy " hight.

So barren are its moors, that nought
But tangled grasses grow;

So high its hills, that like mere rills
The distant rivers show.

There, when on panting summer night
The grayling dart around,
With cormorants and lanterns bright
Into their wherries bound

The fishermen, a merry crowd,
From off the shingly beach,
And row against the dashing flood
Though ev'ry crystal reach.

And when the hoar-frost 'gins to fall,
And Koshi's autumn moors

Are full of birds, my hawkers all
Assemble out of doors.

The poet, at the time of composing this piece, was governor of the

province of Koshi in the north-west of the empire.

But none of their so vaunted stock With "Blackie" mote compare → Big Blackie" was a roof-tailed hawk, And a silver bell she bare.

At morn five hundred birds we'd start,
And more at fall of day:
Swift in her flight, swift to alight,
She never miss'd her prey.

But while I gaz'd with smiling pride
Upon my "Blackie" dear,

Sure that in all the world beside
Ne'er would arise her peer,

That ugly, vile, and craz'd old man,
All on a rainy day,

Without a word, takes the dear bird

Out hunting far away;

And, coming back, and coughing low,
Tells me the bitter tale,
How, soaring from the moor below,
Heav'nward the hawk did sail,

On past Mishima's grassy plain
And Futagúmi's height,

Till, lost amid the clouds and rain,
She vanish'd from the sight.

* My lord's hawker.

To tempt her home was past my pow'r :
Helpless and dumb I stood,

While flames my bosom did devour,
And sadly I did brood.

And yet, if haply some fond spell
Might lure her back to me,
Watchers I set, and many a net
All over hill and lea;

And with the holy symbols white,
And glitt'ring mirror's sphere,
Call'd on the gods of awful might
My sad complaint to hear.

So, as I waited at the shrine,
And sleep stole o'er mine eyes,

A fairy maid stood forth and said :—
"The hawk thy soul doth prize,

Thy glorious 'Blackie,' is not lost;
But o'er Matsúda's beach,
And where the fisher-boats are toss'd

On Himi's breezy reach,

"O'er Furu's strand and Tako's isle,
Where myriad seagulls play,
She's been a hunting all the while :
I saw her yesterday.

* For the use of the mirror and of linen or paper symbols in making supplication to the gods see the notes to pp. 77 and 103.

"Two days at least must come and go
Before she homeward flies;

Sev'n days at most,-it must be so,-
Will show her to thine eyes.

[In the year 749 there had been no rain since the sixth day of the intercalary fifth moon,* and the peasants' fields and gardens seemed on the point of drying up. On the first day of the sixth moon there suddenly appeared a rain-cloud, which gave occasion to the following verses.]

From ev'ry quarter of the vast domains,—

Earth's whole expanse,-o'er which the sov'reign
reigns,

Far as the clank of horses' hoofs resounds,
Far as the junks seek ocean's utmost bounds,
Ten thousand off'rings, as in days of yore,
Still to this day their varied treasures pour
Into th' imperial coffers:-but of all
The bearded rice is chief and principal.
But now, alas! the fields are till'd in vain;

According to the old Japanese calendar, which was modelled on that of China, an intercalary month had to be inserted three times in every eight years to make up for the reckoning of the year as containing only 360 days.

Day follows day, and still no show'r of rain ;
Morn after morn each thirsty blade droops down,
And ev'ry garden tint is chang'd to brown;
While I, heart-stricken, on the prospect gaze,
And, as the infant that his hands doth raise
To clutch his mother's breast, so to the heav'n
I lift mine eyes to pray that rain he giv'n.

Oh! may the cloud whose fleecy form is seen
To rest yon distant mountain-peaks between,
Wafted across to where the ocean-god
Makes in the foaming waves his dread abode,
Meet with the vapours of the wat'ry plain,
Then here returning, fall as grateful rain!

(YAKAMOCHI.)

Eament on the Mutability of all Earthly Things.

Since the far natal hour of earth and heaven,
Men never cease to cry

That ne'er to aught in this our world 'twas given
To last eternally.

If upward gazing on the moon of light

That hangs in heav'n's high plain,

I see her wax, 'twill not be many a night
Before that moon shall wane.

`And if in spring each twig puts forth his flow'r On all the hills around,

Dew-chill'd and storm-swept in dull autumn's hour The leaves fall to the ground,