Moonlight;
Across the mat
The shadow of a pine.
Think of that for a while.
And here is another mother-cry for a dead child. There are summer days in which every Japanese child that can toddle is chasing dragon-flies, and the children who die must pass through a hundred worlds. So this mother's thought runs thus:
Oh, little catcher of dragon-flies,
I wonder how far
You've gone.
But I like best the first:
The east wind blowing;
Oh, the little finger-holes
Through the shogis!
We drifted out into the night air. Every house was dark and quiet. The Happy Exile stopped once to pat a yellow cur on the head.
"All these people know me," he said, "and I can step into any house without a word and sleep the night." But we followed that narrow alley up long flights of narrow, winding steps, under thick bushes that arched above us and shattered the moonbeams about our feet. There was not a cloud in the sky when we reached the top of the bluff, and I felt for the first time what the magic of this land was to the Happy Exile. The moon was soaring on toward those stars—the stars that float high in this sky of Japan.