And indeed the following tiny picture is a truer bit of work, according to Japanese art-principles (I do not know the author's name):—
Semi hitotsu
Matsu no yū-hi wo
Kakac keri.
Lo! on the topmost pine, a so'itary cicada
Vainly attempts to clasp one last red beam of sun.
IV
Philosophical verses do not form a numerous class of Japanese poems upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic.[1] As the metamorphosis of the butterfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem of the soul's ascension, so the natural -history of the cicada has furnished Buddhism with similitudes[2] and parables[3] for the teaching of doctrine.
Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our former existence no more than the semi remembers the shell from which it has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:—
註
