Come whence ye may, I marvel not That ye are lured to seek this spot; Your tenuous scarcely breathèd powers Sway not the sturdier garden flowers, And had unmanifest gone by Save that she feels them visibly. O little winds, her little hands In time with tunes from fairy-lands Are moving; and her bended head Knows nothing of the long years sped Since heaven more near to earth was hung, And gods lived, and the world was young. Her inner robe of tenderest fawn In cool, faint fountains of the dawn Was dyed; and her long outer dress Borrows its luminous loveliness From some clear bowl with water filled In which one drop of wine was spilled. Peace folds her in its deeps profound; Her shy glance lifts not from the ground; And through this garden's still retreat She moves with tripping silver feet Whose trancèd grace, where'er she strays, Turns all the days to holy days. Come! let us softly steal away. For what can we, whose hearts are grey, Bring to her dreaming paradise? A chill shall mock her from our eyes; A cloud shall dim this radiant air: Come! for our world is otherwhere. But O ye little winds that blow From golden islands long ago Lost to our searching in the deep Of dreams between the shores of sleep-- Ye shall her happy playmates be, Fluttering her robes invisibly. [Illustration: HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND. Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size 11 × 8. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_. Gookin Collection. _Plate 11._] [Illustration: SUSUKI HARUNOBU.] The few available fragments of information about the life of Susuki Harunobu can be briefly stated. Born between 1725 and 1730, he lived in Yedo all his life in a house near the river. In 1764 he perfected a new and epoch-making treatment of colour-print technique, and died in 1770, not much more than forty years of age. We may, where so little is known, willingly follow Dr. Kurth in his ingenious tracing of a romantic link between Harunobu and the hamlet of Kasamori, whose pine-trees, red temple-torii, and beautiful tea-house waitress O-Sen haunt his work recurrently; but we must be content to regard this as at least half fancy. Harunobu's direct teacher was Shigenaga, and he was influenced early by Toyonobu; but it was to Sukenobu and Kiyomitsu that he turned for the inspiration of those characteristic figures which he created during the six great years of his real activity.