In which to play.
AUTUMN
I know her not by fallen leaves
Or resting heaps of hay;
Or by the sheathing mists of mauve
That soothe the fiery day.
I know her not by plumping nuts,
By redded hips and haws,
Or by the silence hanging sad
Under the wind's sere pause.
But by her sighs I know her well —
They are like Sorrow's breath;
And by this longing, strangely still,
For something after death.
SHINTO
(Miyajima, Japan, 1905)
Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave
Find the worship and glory we
Give to the one God great and grave —
Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer
Here on your gates – the story see
And answer out of the earth and air.
For I am Nature's child, and you
Were by the children of Nature built.
Ages have on you smiled – and dew
On you for ages has been spilt —
Till you are beautiful as Time
Mossy and mellowing ever makes:
Wrapped as you are in lull – or rhyme
Of sounding drum that sudden breaks.
This is my prayer then, this: that I
Too may reverence all of life,
Lose no power and miss no high
Awe, of a world with wonder rife!
That I may build in spirit fair
Temples and torii on each place
That I have loved – Oh, hear it, Air,
Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace!
MAYA
(Hiroshima, Japan, 1905)
Pale sampans up the river glide,
With set sails vanishing and slow;
In the blue west the mountains hide,
As visions that too soon will go.
Across the rice-lands, flooded deep,
The peasant peacefully wades on —
As, in unfurrowed vales of sleep,
A phantom out of voidness drawn.
Over the temple cawing flies
The crow with carrion in his beak.
Buddha within lifts not his eyes
In pity or reproval meek;
Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow
A respite from the blinding sun,
The old priest – dreaming painless how
Nirvana's calm will come when won.
"All is illusion, Maya, all
The world of will," the spent East seems
Whispering in me; "and the call
Of Life is but a call of dreams."
A JAPANESE MOTHER
(In Time of War)
The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops,
Down on the brink of the river.
My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse —
The bamboo copse where the rice field stops:
The bamboos sigh and shiver.
The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill;
I must pray to Inari.
I hear her calling me low and chill —
Low and chill when the wind is still
At night and the skies hang starry.
And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead!
Your lord who went to battle.