The poet here is a country-lad. In unfamiliar fields he listens to the great autumn chorus of insects; and the sound revives for him the memory of his far-off home and of his parents. But here is something incomparably more touching,—though in literal translation probably more obscure,—than either of the preceding specimens;— Mi ni shimiru Kazé ya! Shōji ni Yubi no ato! —“_Oh, body-piercing wind!—that work of little fingers in the shōji!_”[2]…. What does this mean? It means the sorrowing of a mother for her dead child. _Shōji_ is the name given to those light white-paper screens which in a Japanese house serve both as windows and doors, admitting plenty of light, but concealing, like frosted glass, the interior from outer observation, and excluding the wind. Infants delight to break these by poking their fingers through the soft paper: then the wind blows through the holes. In this case the wind blows very cold indeed,—into the mother’s very heart;—for it comes through the little holes that were made by the fingers of her dead child. [2] More literally:—“body-through-pierce wind—ah!—_shōji_ in the traces of [viz.: holes made by] fingers!” The impossibility of preserving the inner quality of such poems in a literal rendering, will now be obvious. Whatever I attempt in this direction must of necessity be _ittakkiri;_—for the unspoken has to be expressed; and what the Japanese poet is able to say in seventeen or twenty-one syllables may need in English more than double that number of words. But perhaps this fact will lend additional interest to the following atoms of emotional expression:— A MOTHER’S REMEMBRANCE _Sweet and clear in the night, the voice of a boy at study, Reading out of a book…. I also once had a boy!_ A MEMORY IN SPRING _She, who, departing hence, left to the flowers of the plum-tree, Blooming beside our eaves, the charm of her youth and beauty, And maiden pureness of heart, to quicken their flush and fragrance,— Ah! where does she dwell to-day, our dear little vanished sister?_ FANCIES OF ANOTHER FAITH _(1) I sought in the place of graves the tomb of my vanished friend: From ancient cedars above there rippled a wild doves cry._ _(2) Perhaps a freak of the wind-yet perhaps a sign of remembrance,— This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour for the dead._ _(3)I whispered a prayer at the grave: a butterfly rose and fluttered— Thy spirit, perhaps, dear friend!…_ IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT _This light of the moon that plays on the water I pour for the dead, Differs nothing at all from the moonlight of other years._ AFTER LONG ABSENCE _The garden that once I loved, and even the hedge of the garden,— All is changed and strange: the moonlight only is faithful;— The moon alone remembers the charm of the time gone by!_ MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA _O vapory moon of spring!—would that one plunge into ocean Could win me renewal of life as a part of thy light on the waters!_ AFTER FAREWELL