Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/394

272 heart, of the imagination, may be born into the world. Without love there is no miracle, without suffering there can be no splendour of beauty. The artist who creates as a hen lays an egg attracts us no more to his work than the hen by her frenzied cackling does to hers. And as without love all is naught, so, without the ardours and anguishes of the soul, is all useless. The spring that is not wrenched painfully from the lap of winter, the spring that follows languidly and tamely after the heat and greenness of a tropic season, has lost much that makes it dear. What we gain in ease of attainment is forfeited in delight—the high, sharp edge that is suffering and joy in one.

In Japan the suffering almost overbears the joy. The spring comes and is gone again, the bitter cold is back, the biting wind, the sullen ache of the chill air. The swelling buds are pinched, the frost grips them and bids them wait; and even when, a little kinder, he bids them open, the winter, jealous of the white flowers of the Plum, may send an envious snow-storm to rival the fallen petals.

As early as January the Plum blossoms begin to appear. First the fragile, frightened-looking white ones; then the healthier, less wraith-like, creamy ones; and last of all those of pearly pink, pure pink, and even hardy crimson. Of course these are out of doors; already, from New Year’s Day onward, there have been the forced blooms