Harunobu's work is among the most highly prized in the whole list. The great collections have many of his prints, but in the market one finds the fine ones to be limited in number. In his case, even more than in the case of other artists, perfect condition is a vital requirement. For, in the process of fading, his prints lose that delicate colour-orchestration which is their supreme glory. The same changes in tone that would hardly detract from the beauty of a fine Kiyomitsu might easily rob a fine Harunobu of most of its significance. If one has once seen the copies in such collections as that of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin, of Chicago, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, of Evanston, Messrs. William S. Spaulding and John T. Spaulding, of Boston, or Mr. Howard Mansfield of New York, one loses all interest in the battered riff-raff of the dealers' counters.
Koriusai.
Koriusai speaks.
Let whoso will take sheets as wide
As some great wrestler's mountain-back
Space cannot hide
His lack.
Take thou the panel, being strong.
'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right—
As slender and divinely long
And white.
That tall and narrow icy space
Gives scope for all the brush beseems.
And who shall ask a wider place
For dreams?
It is an isle amid the tide—
A chink wherethrough shines one lone star—
A cell where calms of heaven hide
Afar.
One chosen curve of beauty wooed
From out the harsh chaotic world
Shall there in solitude
Be furled.
The narrow door shall be so strait
Life cannot vex, with troubled din,
Beauty, beyond that secret gate
Shut in.
Lo! I will draw two lovers there,
Alone amid their April hours,
With lines as drooping and as fair
As flowers.