Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/163

Rh faithless lord, may be set this quiet tribute of grateful security:

Thou art as yonder Delicate hill-pine, Through years a thousand Ever the same.

It would not occur to a Tōkyō editor to invite his readers in the silly season to answer the question, "Have women a sense of humour?" But, if it did, such quatrains as follow might convince him that they have:

I am my master's Single-flowered cherry; Folk seeking blossom Bend no boughs here.

All night I waited, Yet my lord came not; None but the moon came Under my net.

The kaya (mosquito-net) is not a mere curtain, but a green gauze room within a room, suspended from the corners of the ceiling.

Humour has indeed discharged thousands of these pretty pellets, which lend themselves admirably to satire, drollery, and play on words. Yet these are precisely the most difficult to render. A jest, of which the point depends on punning ambiguity, should never cross the frontier. When a foreigner has been made to see the quaint conjunction of incongruous ideas, he will yet miss the surprise attending identity