88 Shadowings 



" But the days passed quickly ; and later, when 

 I heard the crying of the semi grow fainter and 

 fainter in the time of the autumn winds, I began 

 to feel compassion for them, and I made this 

 second verse : 



" Shim-nokore* 

 Hitotsu bakari wa 

 Aki no se'mi." 



[Now there survives 



But a single one 



Of the se'mi of autumn !] 



Lovers of Pierre Loti (the world's greatest 

 prose-writer) may remember in Madame Cbrys- 

 antbeme a delightful passage about a Japanese 

 house, describing the old dry woodwork as 

 impregnated with sonority by the shrilling crick- 

 ets of a hundred summers. 1 There is a Japan- 

 ese poem containing a fancy not altogether 

 dissimilar : 



1 Speaking of his own attempt to make a drawing of 

 the interior, he observes : " II manque ce logis dessine' 

 son air frele et sa sonorite" de violon sec. Dans les traits 

 de crayon qui repr&entent les boiseries, il n'y a pas la 

 precision minutieuse avec laquelle elles sont ouvrage'es, ni 

 leur antiquite' extreme, ni leur proprete' parfaite, ni les 

 vibrations de ct gales qtfelles semblent avoir emmagasinies pen- 

 dant des centaines d"etis dans leurs fibres dessicbies." 



