Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/49

 than this Japanese beatitude of sitting lost in revery and rapturous contemplation of a blossoming tree, or inditing a verse to ume no hana, and fastening the bit of paper to the branches. In this Utopia the spring poem is never rejected, nor made the subject of cruel jokes. The winds fan it gently, it hangs conspicuous, it is read by him who runs, but it is not immortal, and the first heavy rain leaves it a wet and withered wreck, soon to fall to the ground and disappear.

Just outside the temple-door is a plum-tree whose age is lost in legend. Its bent and crooked limbs and propped-up branches sustain a thick-massed pyramid of pale rose-pink. The outer boughs droop like a weeping-willow, and their flowers seem to be slipping down them like rosy rain-drops. Poets and peers, dreamers and plodders, coolies, fishermen, and the unspiritual foreigner, all admire this lovely tree, and its wide arms flutter with poems in its praise. All around the thatched roof of the old temple stand plum-trees covered with fragant [sic] blossoms—snow white, palest yellow, rose, or deep carnation-red. The sheltering hill back of the temple is crowded with gravestones, tombs, tablets, and mossy Buddhas, sitting calm and impassive in tangles of grasses and vines under the shadow of ancient trees. A wide-spreading pine on the crest of the hill is a famous landmark, whence one looks down on the flower-wreathed village, the golden bow of the beach curving from headland to headland, and the blue bay flashing with hundreds of square white sails. It is a place for poesy and day-dreams, but the foreign visitor dedicates it to luncheon, table-talk, and material satisfactions, and, perhaps, the warm sun and air, and the mild fragrance of the plum-blossoms aid and abet the insatiable picnic appetite.

All this part of Japan is old, and rich in temples, shrines, and picturesque villages, with a net-work of narrow roads and shady by-paths leading through perpetual 33