Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/328

Rh the big bell of a Buddhist temple. I am somewhat puzzled by the name; for the insect's music really suggests the tones of a Japanese harp, or koto—as good authorities declare. Perhaps the appellation refers not to the boom of the bell, but to those deep, sweet hummings which follow after the peal, wave upon wave.

Japanese poems on semi are usually very brief; and my collection chiefly consists of hokku,—compositions of seventeen syllables. Most of these hokku relate to the sound made by the semi,—or, rather, to the sensation which the sound produced within the poet's mind. The names attached to the following examples are nearly all names of old-time poets,—not the real names, of course, but the gō, or literary names by which artists and men of letters are usually known.

Yokoi Yayū, a Japanese poet of the eighteenth century, celebrated as a composer of hokku, has left us this naïve record of the feelings with which he heard the chirruping of cicadae in summer and in autumn:— 註