Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/276

208 As time went on, the young warrior fell to writing on a tanzaku, and passed it to his friend, who read from it the following poem :

The poem seemed to make a strong appeal to the imagination of the shaveling. Time and again he ran his eye over it before putting the paper down on the bench at his side. Then suddenly a vagrant puff of wind caught and carried it off. For a moment it floated in air, then fluttered down into a pleasure-boat that lay moored to the shore.

The samurai in question bore the name of