Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/80

64 nature of poetry in a thoughtful spirit. I transcribe the more important passages:—

"The poetry of Yamato (Japan) has the human heart for its seed, and grows therefrom into the manifold forms of speech. Men are full of various activities, among which poetry is that which consists in expressing the thoughts of their hearts by metaphors taken from what they see or hear.

"Listening to the nightingale singing among the flowers or to the cry of the frog which dwells in the water, we recognise the truth that of all living things there is not one which does not utter song. It is poetry by which, without an effort, heaven and earth are moved, and gods and demons invisible to our eyes are touched with sympathy. By poetry the converse of lovers is made gentler, and the hearts of fierce warriors soothed.

"Poetry began when heaven and earth were created. But of that which has been handed down to our day, the first was made in everlasting heaven by Shita-teru-hime, and on the ore-yielding earth by Susa-no-wo. In the age of the swift gods it would seem that as yet there was no established metre. Their poetry was artless in form and hard of comprehension. It was in the age of man that Susa-no-wo made the first poetry of thirty and one syllables. And so by the varied multiplication of thoughts and language we came to express our love for flowers, our envy of birds, our emotion at the sight of the hazes which usher in the spring, or our grief at beholding the dew. As a distant journey is begun by our first footstep and goes on for months and years, as a high mountain has its beginning in the dust of its base and at length rises aloft and extends across the sky like