Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/56

44 their happy thoughts than to fit links into a poetic chain. This may be illustrated by the beginning of another series: This is unhappily a more representative example of linked-verse making than any I have given thus far since, in the nature of things, it was almost impossible to produce a really successful series. Here, some of the links have great individual merit, but the connections between them are poor. Thus, the image of the lightning flashes, a characterization of the familiar jagged white patterns left around footprints in the ice, is made the more brilliant by the overtones of the sharp sound of the cracking ice, and the apprehension aroused in the walker, like that on hearing thunder. But the verse has unfortunately nothing to do with