The English Lyric 7 



In the song from the province of Iwami, the song of a lover 

 seeking the trysting-place, a more romantic note is struck: 



Ah, the darling ! . . . 



Ever as I steal along the ricefield path 



The firefly kindles a light to show me the way . . . 



And even this, with its flavor of conceit, may perhaps bear com- 

 parison with the nobler conceit of the epigram ascribed to Aris- 

 tocles, the son of Ariston, before he became known as the Plato 

 who would banish poets and poesy from his City of the Wise: 



aarepas elaa6peh, aarr/p ifx6s- eWe yevotp.rjv 

 ovpav6s, ws iroWois 6p.p.acriv ets ere /3\^ra> — 



which in English runs naturally into a little sibilant song : 



Thou gazest on the stars, my star? . . . 

 And 'tis O that I might be 

 Yon starry skies 

 With myriad eyes 

 To gaze on thee ! 



In Greece and in Japan we find the same primordial pleased 

 amaze that a world could be so fair; and if the classic peoples 

 preserved it undefiled into the highest culture, keeping always 

 in the " white light," as Professor Woodberry puts it, this was 

 rather because of the exceptional sun-delight of their natural 

 domain than because the mode was exclusive possession of their 

 race. It was in English poetry long before the Renaissance. 

 Plus a humorously genial insight into men and affairs it is the 

 chief poetical asset of Chaucer; and every poet, no matter to 

 what agonies of introspection or grimness of message he may 

 later attain, must first have possessed as his poetic birthright this 

 divine child- joy. 



But if the luminous mode nourishes the root of poetic aspira- 

 tion, it by no means determines the form and fashion of the 

 flower. There are all-important conditions of environment, of 

 racial predilection, of education and the mould of natural cir- 

 cumstance. The poetry of the Japanese is not, after all, that of 

 the Greek: Fuji-yama and Buddha demand oracles other than 



349 



