Page:Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan.djvu/102

 to start in the morning. At midnight I dreamt that a cedar twig was thrown into the room as a token bestowed by the Inari god. I was startled, but waking found it only a dream.

We began our return journey after midnight, and as we could not find a lodging, we again passed a night in a very small house, which seemed to be a very curious one somehow. "Do not sleep! Something unexpected will happen!" "Don't be frightened!" "Lie down even without breathing!" This was said and I spent the night in loneliness and dread. I felt that I lived a thousand years that night, and when the day dawned I saw that we were in a robbers' den. People said that the mistress of that house lived by a strange occupation.

We crossed the Uji River in a high wind and the ferry-boat passed very near the fishing seine.

[This poem may seem a little obscure. It means that her own life had been lived long in a kind of dreamland of her own creating, but was gradually emerging into reality.]

If, as I am doing now, I continue to write down events four or five years after they have happened, 58