Green vines hang through the high forest,
They weave a whole roof to the mountain,
The lone man sits with shut speech,
He purrs and pats the clear strings.
He throws his heart up through the sky,
He bites through the flower pistil
and brings up a fine fountain.
The red-pine-tree god looks on him and wonders.
He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin,
He takes “Floating Hill”[C] by the sleeve,
He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin.
But you, you dam’d crowd of gnats,
Can you even tell the age of a turtle?
[C] Name of a sennin.
A Ballad of the Mulberry Road
(Fenollosa MSS., very early.)
The sun rises in south east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu,
(pretty girl)
She made the name for herself: “Gauze Veil,”
For she feeds mulberries to silkworms,
She gets them by the south wall of the
town.
With green strings she makes the warp of her basket,
She makes the shoulder-straps of her basket
from the boughs of Katsura,
And she piles her hair up on the left side of her head-piece.
Her earrings are made of pearl,
Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk,
Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple,
And when men going by look on Rafu
They set down their burdens,
They stand and twirl their moustaches.