Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/113

Rh would do him a world of good. He wrote “Tankyoku” in the Sad Love and Sad Song, the fourteen-line songs which proved successful. They are impressive in their own special way, one dwelling on a speculation in thought, and another carrying a terribly realistic picture of passion. What he sings in them is less Japanese than universal. “Tankyoku” is not a sonnet which should be rigid in form and idea; it is simply written in fourteen lines:

It is acknowledged that in his later work he has deserted the golden realm of romanticism and entered delightfully into the silver-grey cloud-land of symbolism; and he has made a better friendship with Verlaine, and taken him as a bosom friend without any proper etiquette, and even thinks that he is himself a Japanese Verlaine. I am sure that there is no slightest harm in it.