Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/204

 There is in our Japanese life no period called youth; we arrive at manhood at once from boyhood; and those boyhood days are frightfully short.

Don’t spoil your poetry by questioning, denying or renunciation. Only you have to adore it, praise it; that is the only way such an unreasonable thing as poetry will develope. The question of poetry is a question of nerve in which thought and passion have their sweet dreams.

I am like a cobweb hung upon the tree, a prey to every wind and sunlight. Who will ever say that we are safe and strong?

How sad Japan began her life with moralising. No, we shall not thank Confucius. If we had begun it with dance or song, our temperament might have been more natural. Nearly all the nations, it seems to me, began, just like us human beings, their own lives wrongly in spite of themselves.

What I am terrified about with success is Rh