Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/286

Rh Of course these compositions make but slight appeal to aesthetic sentiment: they are merely curious, for the most part. But they help us to understand something of the soul of the elder Japan. The people who could find delight, century after century, in watching the ways of insects, and in making such verses about them, must have comprehended, better than we, the simple pleasure oi existence. They could not, indeed, describe, the magic of nature as our great Western poets have done; but they could feel the beauty of the world without its sorrow, and rejoice in that beauty, much after the manner of inquisitive and happy children.

If they could have seen the dragon-fly as we can see it,—if they could have looked at that elfish head with its jewelled ocelli, its marvellous compound eyes, its astonishing mouth, under the microscope,—how much more extraordinary would the creature have seemed to them!………And yet, though wise enough to have lost that fresh naïve pleasure in natural observation which colors the work of these quaint poets, we are not so very much wiser than they were in regard to the real wonder of the insect. We are able only to estimate more accurately the immensity of our ignorance concerning it. Can we 註