Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/81

Rh some nobleman who, while hunting in a distant part of the country, falls in love with a village girl. The style and the manner of incorporating the poems into the episodes is most easily revealed by a section from The Tales of Ise such as the following one:

"“There once lived a man in a remote village. One day, announcing to his beloved that he was going to the court for service there, he took a fond leave of her and departed. For three years he did not return, and the lady, having in loneliness waited so long for him, finally consented to spend the night with another man, who had been very kind to her. That very night her old lover returned. When he knocked at the door, asking her to unbolt it, she answered him through the door with this poem. ‘For three years I waited in loneliness, and just this night someone else is sharing my pillow.’ He replied, ‘Try then to love him as much as I have loved you through all these years.’ With this poem he started away, but the lady called out, ‘Whatever has happened or not happened, my heart is still, as it was before, yours.’ But the man did not turn back. Stricken with grief, she followed after him, but could not manage to catch up. In a place where a clear stream flowed, she fell, and there with blood from her finger she wrote on a stone, ‘I could not detain him—he went without a thought for me, and now shall I vanish.’ Thus she wrote, and there she died.”"

If one reads just the four poems contained in this episode, one sees that they narrate the entire story, although not so clearly as when supplemented by the prose description. It may have been originally by way of a commentary on the poems that the tales were composed.

One of the early novels which most clearly shows the two