Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/125

 it in my heart’s deep core, while I hurried to my lodging late on that unforgettable night. And when I became better composed under the sympathetic light in my room, my mind like a ship on the waves deathless’ and timeless or freeborn leaves enraptured in the quiet of the skies, drifted slowly into the adventure of comparison-making between the literatures Oriental and Irish; Yeats’ song on Innisfree made me at once think of T’ao Yuan-ming of the Tsin Dynasty of China (A.D. 365-427) whose famous ode, “Homeward Return” sounds in my opinion more Celtic than any other old Chinese poem. Celtic temperament in ancient China, you ask? Oh, yes, a good deal of it. Not only the Saxons, but also the old Chinese, did indeed evoke poetry through the Celtic flames blown by the dove-gray wind, no matter where the Chinese got it; there is nothing strange to compare the ancient Oriental poetry with Yeats of the present time, because both of them are of the language very old and very new like the lonely face of a dream. I might say it was Yuan-ming’s weakness that he was only able to find poetry in the emphasising of his own life, Rh