It is to be regretted that Mrs. Fenollosa gives us so little of the religious or mystical in Japanese thought, since no country is richer in material of the sort, and especially as the isolated poems and passages in which she touches upon it are all so interpretative. She has one poem, a petition of old people at a temple, that strikes deep root both in pathos and philosophy. Perhaps the Japanese excel all other peoples in the reverence paid to age, and yet no excess of consideration can supplant
the melancholy of that time. The second stanza of Mrs. Fenollosa’s poem expresses the aloofness of the old,—
For thy comfort, Lord, we pray,
Namu Amida Butsu!
In the rice-fields, day by day,
Now the strong ones comb the grain;
Once we laughed there in the rain,
Stooping low in sun and cold
For our helpless young and old;
In the rice-fields day by day,