1 8 Shadowings 



robe; and when wearing it, I shall be literally 

 clothed with poetry, even as a divinity might 

 be clothed with the sun. 



The other gift is poetry also, but poetry in the 

 original state : a wonderful manuscript .collection 

 of Japanese songs gathered from unfamiliar 

 sources, and particularly interesting from the 

 fact that nearly all of them are furnished with 

 refrains. There are hundreds of compositions, 

 old and new, including several extraordinary 

 ballads, many dancing-songs, and a surprising 

 variety of love-songs. Neither in sentiment nor 

 in construction do any of these resemble the 

 Japanese poetry of which I have already, in pre- 

 vious books, offered specimens in translation. 

 The forms are, in most cases, curiously irregular ; 

 but their irregularity is not without a strange 

 charm of its own. 



I am going to offer examples of these com- 

 positions, partly because of their unfamiliar 

 emotional quality, and partly because I think that 

 something can be learned from their strange art 

 of construction. The older songs selected from 

 the antique drama seem to me particularly 

 worthy of notice. The thought or feeling and 



