Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/251

Rh of Hitomaro. And when he passed the bay of Akashi, how moving it was.

When he looked on the Springs of Nonaka, the Bay of Futami, and the Pine of Takasago, all celebrated in poetry, he thought how delighted he would be were it not this sort of journey, but in his present distraught frame of mind, which everything served only to deepen, he could only shut his eyes to them. “I must be in a terrible state,” he thought. Clustered cherry trees were in blossom on a lofty peak, and he felt as though he were making his way through white clouds. But the very charm of the scene brought up memory on memory of the capital.

On the twelfth, when he was stopping at a place on the Kako River, he was informed that his son, the Prince Sonchō, about to sail for exile in Sanuki, had arrived at Noguchi, east of the river, although the route he had taken differed somewhat from the Emperor’s. Much moved by the news, the Emperor asked to meet his son, but his escorts refused permission, and the Prince passed on without a glimpse of him. What unbearable agitation must he have experienced then! It hardly need be stated here, but there is no man but would feel unspeakable bitterness and rancor toward a world where even so small a thing could not be granted.

On the seventeenth he reached the province of Mimasaka where