6 Hartley Burr Alexander 



In all of these examples we can clearly grasp the impulsive 

 delight in mere perception which, transfiguring the object of per- 

 ception, gives rise to the luminous quality. And most appro- 

 priately is it likened to light : it is imaginative illumination. But 

 I think, rather than merely classical, the mode is elemental in all 

 poetry. In quality it is nearest akin to child imagination, — eager, 

 active, snared in the filmiest web of sunshine, ever discovering 

 new wonder in what to the tired mind of maturity is only the 

 commonplace. 



We find it pervading children's poetry and we find it in 

 primitive song everywhere. Lafcadio Hearn has given us dainty 

 bits from the poetry of old Japan quite rivaling the Greek. 2 

 Thus in comparing Japanese and Greek appreciation of the poetry 

 of insect life, with the beautiful lines of Meleager, 



O cricket, -the soother of slumber . . . weaving the thread of a voice 

 that causes love to wander away ! . . . 



and, 



Thou vocal tettix, drunk with drops of dew, sitting with thy serrated 

 limbs upon the tops of petals, thou givest out the melody of the lyre from 

 thy dusky skin. . . 



— with these, Hearn may justly set for nicety of observation and 

 delicacy of sentiment this on the aburasemi (a variety of cicada), 



Speaking with that voice, 

 Has the dew taken life? . . . 

 Only the aburazemi ! 

 And in, 



Fathomless deepens the heat : the ceaseless shrilling of semi 

 Mounts, like a hissing fire, up to the motionless clounds. . . 



Hearn gives us a startling parallel to the Alcaean fragment on 

 the cicada preserved to us by Demetrius : 



From beneath his wings a shrilling song he pours — 

 High fluting that to fiery heights upsoars. 



2 Shadowings, 1900. 



348 



