Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/244

Rh dragon-fly is said to have been composed, fourteen hundred and forty years ago, by the Emperor Yūriaku. One day while this Emperor was hunting, say the ancient records, a gadfly came and bit his arm. Therewith a dragon-fly pounced upon that gadfly, and devoured it. Then the Emperor commanded his ministers to make an ode in praise of that dragon-fly. But as they hesitated how to begin, he himself composed a poem in praise of the insect, ending with the words,—

And in honor of the loyal dragon-fly, the place of the incident was called Akitsuno, or the Moor of the Dragon-fly.

The poem attributed to the Emperor Yūriaku is written in the form called naga-uta, or "long-poetry"; but the later poems on dragon-flies are mostly composed in the briefer forms of Japanese verse. There are three brief forms,—the ancient tanka, consisting of thirty-one syllables; the popular 註