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A Japanese miscellany - University of Oregon

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stake<br />

!<br />

Dragon-flies 11^<br />

Tombo ya<br />

Hana naki kui ni<br />

Sumi-narai.<br />

Ah, the dragon-fly ! content to dwell upon a flowerless<br />

Neta ushi no<br />

Tsuno ni hararenu,<br />

Yamma kana<br />

O great dragon-fly I will you never leave the horn <strong>of</strong><br />

the sleeping ox ?<br />

dragon-fly I what<br />

that fence-stake ?<br />

Kui no saki<br />

Nanika ajiwo<br />

Tombo kana ?<br />

!<br />

!<br />

can you be tasting on the top <strong>of</strong><br />

Of course tliese compositions make but slight<br />

appeal to sesthetic sentiment : they are merely<br />

curious, for the most part. But they help us to<br />

understand something <strong>of</strong> the soul <strong>of</strong> the elder<br />

Japan. The people who could find delight, cen-<br />

tury after century, in watching the ways <strong>of</strong> in-<br />

sects, and in making such verses about them,<br />

must have comprehended, better than we, the<br />

simple pleasure <strong>of</strong> existence. They could not,

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