Elegies

FROM THE

"MANYEFUSHIFU;"

OR,

"COLLECTION OF A MYRIAD LEAVES."

ELEGIES.

Elegy on the Death of the Mikado_Teñji.*

BY ONE OF HIS LADIES.

Alas! poor mortal maid! unfit to hold
High converse with the glorious gods above,t
Each morn that breaks still finds me unconsoled,
Each hour still hears me sighing for my love.

Wert thou a precious stone, I'd clasp thee tight
Around mine arm; wert thou a silken dress,
I'd ne'er discard thee either day or night :-
Last night, sweet love! I dreamt I saw thy face.
(ANON.)

Elegy on the Death of Prince Hinami.

[This prince died A.D. 689 in the twenty-second year of his age, His father, Teñimu, who had died three years previously, had been temporarily succeeded during the statutory years of mourning and

* Died A.D. 671. This piece has been translated by Mons. Léon de Rosny in his “Anthologie Japonaise.”

Viz., with the departed and deified Mikado.

the troublous times that ensued by his consort, the Empress Jitou, from whom the throne was to have passed to Prince Hinami as soon as circumstances would permit of the ceremony of his accession.

The first strophe of the elegy deals with the fabulous early history, relating the appointment by a divine council of Ninigi no-Mikoto as first emperor of the dynasty of the gods in Japan. From him Prince Hinami was descended, and his death is, therefore, in the second strophe, figured as a flight back to heaven, his ancestral home, motived by the inutility of his presence in a world where his mother reigned supremo. The third strophe expresses the grief of the nation, and paints the loneliness of the tomb at Mayumi, which is represented by the poct as a palace where the Prince dwells in solitude and silence. The closing lines refer to the watchers by the tomb, who are removed after a certain time.]

When began the earth and heaven,
By the banks of heaven's river *
All the mighty gods assembled,
All the mighty gods held council,
Thousand myriads held high council;
And (for that her sov'reign grandeur
The great goddess of the day-star
Rul'd th' ethereal realms of heaven)
Downward through the many-pilèd
Welkin did they waft her grandson,
Bidding him, till earth and heaven,
Waxing old, should fall together,
O'er the middle land of Reed-plains,
O'er the land of waving Rice-fields,t
Spread abroad his power imperial.

* The Milky Way.

+ Old poetical names for Japan.