HAKU.
How strange that a poor fisherman should put my verse into a sweet native measure! Who can he be?
FISHERMAN.
A poor man and unknown. But as for the making of “uta,” it is not only men that make them. “For among things that live there is none that has not the gift of song.”[192]
HAKU (taking up the other’s words as if hypnotized).
“Among things that have life,—yes, and birds and insects—”
FISHERMAN.
They have sung Yamato songs.
HAKU.