Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/60

56 happiness and sorrow rhythmically commingled, a human feeling already joined with deathlessness, seeing right before me the great ghost of the Past and Eternity, because the Present slips away like a mouse chased by sunlight.

You know well enough there is a great deal of cant in the term “appreciative audience” of modern usage in theatrical reviews or papers. When we must spend two or three years in realising how many others fail in becoming No appreciators, it means that those elected in this particular art, where appreciation is not less, perhaps is greater, than the acting itself, will find their own lives vitalised with the sense of power in Japanese weariness. When we feel the beauty of the monotony of the No drama that is gained by the sacrifice of variety, I think that our work of appreciation is just started. I cannot forget the impression carved on my mind, which was then roughened, stiffened, by the toss of Western life of quite many years, when I first entered Hosho’s No house some ten years ago. It was the month of October, with maple-leaves and passion-flowers fallen, with birds and love flung away, whose gray heart was in perfect accord with this No performance. I smiled to my friend, who was a great appreciator, playfully but none the less delightedly, when I noticed the “honourable names” of those occupants, lords or barons or what not, written on the wooden