Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/166

138 crowds to feast their eyes on garden or pond. The arts of flower-arrangement and landscape-gardening may be looked upon as branches of science and philosophy; at least, they command as much veneration. Inevitably, then, is the minstrel's lyre enwreathed with innumerable garlands. Yet, possibly because of the "pathetic fallacy," which so constantly pervades similar parterres of English poesy that its absence makes the Japanese flower-plot seem scentless, the fancies which find expression in this class of subject appear particularly trivial. Sometimes a personal preference is stated, as in

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Sometimes the cut blossom is commiserated, as in

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Sometimes the operation of a natural law, to which plants as well as other forms of life are subject, points a moral:

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But human egoism, which only sees in nature a