The first two lines are unimpeachable, but when the “lotos-peak” is amplified into a “swan-like rhapsody,” one is swept quite away from his bearings. It is but an illustration of the effort that often goes to the building of a sonnet and renders forced and inept what was designed to be artistic. Mrs. Fenollosa’s sonnets, however, do not often violate congruity, for while the sonnet is by no means her representative form, she handles it with as much ease as do most of the modern singers, and occasionally one comes upon her most characteristic lines in this compass; but it is true of the sonnet form in general, except in the hands of a thorough artist, that the mechanism is too obvious and obscures the theme. To know Mrs. Fenollosa at her best one must read “Miyoko San,” “Full Moon Over Sumidagawa,” “An Eastern Cry,” “Exiled,” and this song “To a Japanese Nightingale,” full of mystic, wistful beauty, of suggestive spiritual grace. How delicate is its fashioning, and yet how it defines a picture, silhouettes it against the Orient night! Dark on the face of a low, full moon Swayeth the tall bamboo. No flute nor quiver of song is heard, Though sheer on the tip a small brown bird Sways to an inward tune. O small brown bird, like a dusky star, Lone on the tall bamboo, Thou germ of the soul of a summer night, Thou quickening core of a lost delight, Of ecstasy born afar, Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air, Sing from the tall bamboo! Loosen the long, clear, syrup note That shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat; Mellow my soul’s despair! XVI RIDGELY TORRENCE MR. RIDGELY TORRENCE, whose poetic drama, _El Dorado_, brought him generous recognition, gave earlier hostages to fame in the shape of a small volume with the caption, _The House of a Hundred Lights_, and gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai.” Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to arrive at these mysteries, but rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. Torrence is so artistic as to know that only the masters may go upon the road in search of the Secret, and that the average wayfarer may not hope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by a hint now and then. The philosophy of _The House of a Hundred Lights_ is in the main of the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite memory may well chuckle to himself in some remote celestial corner that any couplet of his should have been so potent as to produce it.