CHORUS The young maid now is arrayed; she assumes the curious mantle; watch how she moves in the dance of the rainbow-feathered garment. PRIEST The heavenly feather-robe moves in accord with the wind. TENNIN The sleeves of flowers are being wet with the rain. PRIEST The wind and the sleeve move together. CHORUS It seems that she dances. Thus was the dance of pleasure, Suruga dancing, brought to the sacred east. Thus was it when the lords of the everlasting Trod the world, They being of old our friends. Upon ten sides their sky is without limit, They have named it on this account, 'the enduring.' TENNIN The jewelled axe takes up the eternal renewing, the palace of the moon-god is being renewed with the jewelled axe, and this is always recurring. CHORUS (commenting on the dance) The white kiromo, the black kiromo, Three, five into fifteen, The figure that the Tennin is dividing. There are heavenly nymphs, Amaotome, [3] One for each night of the month, And each with her deed assigned. [Footnote 3: Cf. 'Paradiso,' xxiii, 25. 'Quale nei plenilunii sereni Trivia ride tra le ninfe eterne.'] TENNIN I also am heaven-born and a maid, Amaotome. Of them there are many. This is the dividing of my body, that is fruit of the moon's tree, Katsuma. [4] This is one part of our dance that I leave to you here in your world. [Footnote 4: A tree something like the laurel.] CHORUS The spring mist is widespread abroad; so perhaps the wild olive's flower will blossom in the infinitely unreachable moon. Her flowery head-ornament is putting on colour; this truly is sign of the spring. Not sky is here, but the beauty; and even here comes the heavenly, wonderful wind. O blow, shut the accustomed path of the clouds. O, you in the form of a maid, grant us the favour of your delaying. The pine-waste of Miwo puts on the colour of spring. The bay of Kiyomi lies clear before the snow upon Fuji. Are not all these presages of the spring? There are but few ripples beneath the piny wind. It is quiet along the shore. There is naught but a fence of jewels between the earth and the sky, and the gods within and without, [5] beyond and beneath the stars, and the moon unclouded by her lord, and we who are born of the sun. This alone intervenes, here where the moon is unshadowed, here in Nippon, the sun's field. [Footnote 5: 'Within and without,' gei, gu, two parts of the temple] TENNIN The plumage of heaven drops neither feather nor flame to its own diminution.