Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/144

138 let you go on much longer….’ At which Genji answered him with the poem: ‘O crane, who travellest at will even to the very margin of the Land on High, look well upon me, whether in intent I be not cloudless as this new day of Spring.’ ‘Sometimes for a while I have hope,’ he added; ‘but of those who before have been in my case even the most grave and virtuous have seldom managed to repair their fortunes. I fear I shall not see the precincts of the Capital again.’ ‘Hapless in cloudland shall your crane’s solitary voice re-echo till with his lost friend, wing to wing again, he can renew his flight.’ This was the poem that Chūjō now recited as his boat left the shore.

The third month was now beginning and some one who was supposed to be well up in these matters reminded Genji that one in his circumstances would do well to perform the ceremony of Purification on the coming Festival Day. He loved exploring the coast and readily consented. It happened that a certain itinerant magician was then touring the province of Harima with no other apparatus than the crude back-scene before which he performed his incantations. Genji now sent for him and bade him perform the ceremony of Purification. Part of the ritual consisted in the loading of a little boat with a number of doll-like figures and letting it float out to sea. While he watched this, Genji recited the poem: ‘How like these puppets am I too cast out to dwell amid the unportioned fallows of the mighty sea….’ These verses he recited standing out in the open with nothing but the wind and sky around him, and the magician, pausing to watch him, thought that he had never in his life encountered a creature of such beauty. Till now there had not been the least ripple on the face of the sea.