Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/52

48 night it is certainly futile to dwell on it. Although the author never tells when he heard the bell, I would understand it to be the bell of very early Summer morning, when the whole world and life are in perfect silence; if you awake at such an hour, your bodily composure making your ears doubly susceptible to any sound, I am sure your mind will become at once cooler with the sound of a bell which, with the finest feeling, leaves the wooden bell-hammer, and bids good-bye. And take still one more poem by the same author in the following:

The old Chinese poets sang on the Spring eve, prizing it above many thousand pounds in gold, while the Japanese Uta poets of ancient days admired the purple-coloured dawn of Spring; in the opening passages of Sei Shonagon’s Makura Zoshi or Pillow Sketches we have the following: “In Spring,” to use Aston’s translation, “I love to watch the dawn grow gradually white and whiter, till a faint rosy tinge crowns the mountain’s crest, while slender streaks of purple cloud extend themselves above.” Such is the