Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/350

Rh And indeed the following tiny picture is a truer bit of work, according to Japanese art-principles (I do not know the author's name):—

Semi hitotsu

Matsu no yū-hi wo

Kakac keri.

Philosophical verses do not form a numerous class of Japanese poems upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic. As the metamorphosis of the butterfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem of the soul's ascension, so the natural -history of the cicada has furnished Buddhism with similitudes and parables for the teaching of doctrine.

Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our former existence no more than the semi remembers the shell from which it has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:— 註