Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/96

92 snow-capped Fuji Yama, waves on the beach, the singing of insects or birds, a cherry-blossom, maple-leaves, Spring rains, longing for home, and the like, were the subjects. The Uta poets lamented over the dead, and complained enough about the uncertainty of life; but their voices were not from their actual study of real life; they never speculated of Heaven and where they should go after death. Repetition is not without delight entirely when it is musical; but we shall grow very tired of being suggested the same thing all the time; monotony is often suicidal. But our shintai-shijin (the new-styled poem-writers) broke off at once from such a prejudice which is, at its best, the refuge of an impoverished mind; and they left the old home of restriction and flew out into the freedom of nature and life. We may say that our Japanese poetry received a baptism; and it seems it has somehow revived.

Not only the subjects, the form of the poetry as well underwent a change. The modern poets could not rest satisfied with the hereditary shape, which consisted of five phrases of lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables, 31 syllables in all. (And there is another shorter form, consisting of 5, 7, and 5, which you already know in Hokku.) To-day they make their own forms to fit their own songs; some use lines of 5 and 7, repeating them to a considerable length as they wish, while some use lines of 7 and 6; many forms like 5 and 5; 7 and