DECEMBER, 1920

ringing grooves of change? We cannot tell—it is all so long ago. Even in Japan they have lost the answer to the riddle. They can only say of that age that in dying it took with it a beauty that will never again be seen on earth.

But there is nothing macabre——nothing of the grim or sorrowful in the feeling with which we see Sei Shonagon and her world draw back into the fathomless distance and the curtain fall upon the charming drama. One would never say of them:

“Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well

undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.”

No that is far too grave. It is the wrong note.

Theirs was the play of charming children in the childhood of a world." One pictures the court the Lady Sei loved translated to some strange Buddhisi paradise of figures loitering in quiet gardens, where the eternal sunshine falls on peonies and peacocks in 5:9 languid afternoons; and the soft, subdued talk azzi laughter is of beautiful things in their lower esser.»:*e which appeals to the eye and the mind but never to the spirit.

Japan has since trodden the way that leads to mighty‘ things and to awful realities and chivalries. She is for- getting her happy youth. But Sei Shonagon’s little. clear Voice still sounds across the dead centuries, and f:_—: fragrance is left as in the dead heart of a rose.

SONGS OF A TIBETAN MORNlNG

By WILL THOMPSON

THE WAYSIDE SHRINE

In the honey-colored sunlight of an old shrine

Bent and weathered by the mountain storms,

Huge lacy dragon-flies are darting to and fro. . . . Amid a concave hollow in the rocks,

Scooped out by the hand of the ancient elements, Reposes the house of the mountain Buddha,

The inefiably illumined, the serene of face:

Seems laughing in the sun the aged and wrinkled shrine, Although the austerity of countless winters

Hath made its limb—like beams infirm. . . .

And now I catch the secret enigma of the place~ Yonder down the boulders tumbles a laughing waterfall, Which, striving to balance itself, cannot stop. . .

The old shrine reflects the mirth of this comedy.

RHODODENDRONS

Startles upon the slopes along the brawling river

The springtime laughter of the rhododendron—forests. . . . A stone becomes dislodgedéthe touch of an unseen foot- And tumbles with shy laughter into the tide below.‘ Everywhere is laughter here among the high peaks,

Where life flows in the sun, a buoyant river.

The rhododendrons kindle their silent fires

At the base of the unsealed altars, cold as truth,

Tinged violet with the shadow of eternal snow. . . ..

And here the bracelets of the morn jingle most musically.

TSA-R UNG

Among my golden mountains of Tsa-rung,

Which hang like blossoms above the dark torrents, The laughter of the gods echoes among the peaks. There abide the cyclopean shapes of storm and fancy; There are descried often in the imagination—

But never seen—the phantoms of the waterfall,

The ghostly Woman with the lotus in her hand,

Who grants a boon to the traveler, then steals his eyes, The spirits of the lake who dwell in Rainbow-land. Who hath said that my country is dark and lonely? The sunlight dazzles more because of the very peaks, ,Whose rifts of shadow pierce the heart of noon.

Look from your dazzling ledge down the long purple slope, Bathed in a rhododendron afternoon. . . .

1046