Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/116



The flowers and my love Passed away under the rain, While I idly looked upon them Where is my yester-love?"

"Ono no Komachi," Ki no Tsurayuki remarks, "belongs to the school of Sotoori Hime of ancient times. There is feeling in her poems, but little vigour. She is like a lovely woman who is suffering from ill health. Want of vigour, however, is only natural in a woman's poetry." Although she left little work, her poetical capacity as well as her beauty, it is said, caused her to be called to the Imperial House. She was not from a family of high position by any means, as she was a daughter of a certain chief officer of a county. There is no other woman of old Japan whose life figures so largely in fiction; and her name as a model of beauty more than as a poetess is universally known. Komachi is regarded as a synonym of "beautiful woman "; there were or are many beautiful women nicknamed Komachi. Whether a fiction or not, Fukakusa no