Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/303

Rh :(He seizes the Princess and drags her toward the drum.)

Try! Strike it!

“Strike!” he cries;
 * “The quick beat, the battle-charge!
 * Loud, loud! Strike, strike,” he rails,
 * And brandishing his demon stick
 * Gives her no rest.
 * “Oh woe!” the lady weeps,
 * “No sound, no sound. Oh misery!” she wails.
 * And he, at the mallet stroke, “Repent, repent!”
 * Such torments in the world of night
 * Abōrasetsu, chief of demons, wields,
 * Who on the Wheel of Fire
 * Sears sinful flesh and shatters bones to dust.
 * Not less her torture now!
 * “Oh, agony!” she cries, “What have I done,
 * By what dire seed this harvest sown?”

Clear stands the cause before you. Clear stands the cause before my eyes; I know it now.
 * By the pool’s white waters, upon the laurel’s bough
 * The drum was hung.
 * He did not know his hour, but struck and struck
 * Till all the will had ebbed from his heart’s core;
 * Then leapt into the lake and died.
 * And while his body rocked
 * Like driftwood on the waves,
 * His soul, an angry ghost,
 * Possessed the lady’s wits, haunted her heart with woe.
 * The mallet lashed, as these waves lash the shore,
 * Lash on the ice of the eastern shore.
 * The wind passes; the rain falls
 * On the Red Lotus, the Lesser and the Greater.
 * The hair stands up on my head.
 * “The fish that leaps the falls