Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/124



two Japanese went very well with the three Irish at a little café off Tottenham Court Road seven or eight years ago, although the balance often slanted as two of our foreign friends were ladies who, like Yeats’ faeries, would ride upon the winds and tide and dance upon the mountain like a flame; they were wild, I remember well, over Yeats whose poetry was as in his own words:

One of the ladies sang, or to say better, chanted “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” as she noticed that my mind did not match their enthusiasm; was it not, I wonder, her Irish tactics to make me a captive from a sudden awakening of home thought in my heart? When I made an unconditional surrender to Yeats at least in that song to the delight of all my Irish friends, I was hearing only a famous Japanese “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore”; I can still recall my feeling of hearing Rh