"In the sultry period, feeling oppressed by the greatness of the heat, I made this verse:—
Semi atsushi
Matsu kirabaya to
Omou made.
[The chirruping of the semi aggravates the heat until I wish to cut down the pine-tree on which it sings.]
"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:—
Shini-nokore
Hitotsu bakari wa
Aki no semi."
[Now there survives
But a single one
Of the semi of autumn!][1]
Lovers of Pierre Loti[2] (the world's greatest prose-writer) may remember in Madame Chrysantheme a delightful passage about a Japanese house,—describing the old dry woodwork as impregnated[3] with sonority by the shrilling crickets of a hundred summers. There is a Japanese poem containing a fancy not altogether dissimilar:—
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