Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/102

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But it does steal Into one’s bosom Oh! I who am going to die From the world and love! My thought which I do not tell, And this shadow of the moon, Which is more silent? Which more sad?”

However, from the oppression of life’s meaning, he could not stay young and dreamy, and suddenly stopped singing when he left Tokyo for Shinano, where he became a school-teacher. When he appeared again in literature, it was as a successful novelist. His life as a poet was short, but monumental.

We must come to Bansui Tsuchii to find a representative of the culture and knowledge that advanced in no small degree with the Imperial University as their centre. (By the way, Tsuchii is a University man.) His real qualification as a poet is rather doubtful, but at the same time he is a living proof that a made poet, when he is properly made, is not altogether unacceptable. It is true that he made his Western learning help him to make a better display. It goes without saying that he was never moved by sudden instinct and quickening pulses; but he was glad to scrutinise the phases of Nature, and the universal soul and ideal. He observed wisdom through Hugo and perhaps Schiller (he did not confine his reading to the English poets), and he