Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/101

Rh did not enjoy, nor did he hunt emotion and rapture for writing’s sake as do the later poets. His cadences and pauses were so pleasing. He was meditative, but not slow and also not profound; in one word, he was elementary. And that is one reason why even to-day all the beginners of Shintaishi should go to him first; he is the father of the “new-style” poem in that sense. (That is also like Bryant in America.)

In those days Rossetti and Swinburne were not known in Japan, and Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow were the only names. However, I am not sure at which shrine he burned his incense, although it is clear enough that he was greatly influenced by the Western magic. He who sang the nature and beauty of love in his first book of verses, began to weave the grief and tears of love in his Ichiyoshu; here I notice a certain touch of Saigyo Hoshi, that great sad poet of the Kamakura period, whose Oriental longing was deepened by Occidental suggestiveness. He associated nature with the ineffable yearning of art; and he entered into the bosom of silence to seek his own home of poetry and ideal.

The light of the moon, Shining quiet, Why does it make me think Incessantly? The shadow of the moon Has no voice,