Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/104

100 the Western knowledge kept him at the proper place, and even helped him find the right clue of poetical mystery as he wished. Although his individual note was not impressive, his poems prove his clear truimph over that knowledge and culture which did not appear to him as a distraction; and I will say that he was their best harvester. He was wise to desert his fellow university poets of pseudo-classicism like Takejima or Shioi, and he gained a voice sonorous and rhapsodic, though not particularly rich, yet always attractive, from his excursion into the Chinese diction. Shimazaki was frequently effeminate, but Tsuchii was manly. He was always correct, and comprehensive, so then he lacked a touch of illusion. I am ready to say that he was quite commonplace, but he succeeded in making his commonplaceness often suggestive. I believe that it is no small art.

Those who wished for a deeper colour and variety of diction than Shimazaki’s, and showed a fatigue at his monotony, open their arms to welcome Kyukin Susukida. Susukida enshrined Keats in his heart; like him he is a poet of Youth and Beauty, to whom Nature appeared as a background. At least so he was in his earlier books, Yukuharu and Botekishu. I do not say that he did not understand Nature, but he did not attempt to see her with his naked eyes, and he tried to robe her with his own idealistic robes.