THE GRATEFUL FOXES
(A Japanese Story, in the Japanese Manner.)
PART I.
In the month when cherry-trees
Paint the spring-time pink,
Lady Haru, with her maids,
Sate at Kodzu's brink:
Good it is to live on days like these!
Rosy as a Musmee's lips,
Red as blood on snow,
Bloomed the jewelled branches forth:
Rice-birds chirped below:
Over silver seas went white-sailed ships.
All about the blossoming rape,—