*
Only for one day to be called a mother!—to have a child born only to see it die!... Surely, I thought, if a child must die within two days after birth, it were better that it should never be born.
From the twelfth to the sixth month I had been so ill!—then at last I had obtained some ease, and joy at the birth of a son; and I had received so many congratulations about my good fortune;—and, nevertheless, he was dead!... Indeed, I suffered great grief.
On the tenth day of the sixth month the funeral took place, at the temple called Senpukuji, in Ōkubo, and a small tomb was erected.
The poems composed at that time[30] were the following:—
Omoïkya!
Mi ni saë kaënu
Nadéshiko ni,
Wakaréshi sodé no
Tsuyu no tamoto wo!
If I could, only have known! Ah, this parting with the flower,[31] for which I would so gladly have given my own life, has left my sleeves wet with the dew!
Samidaré ya!
Shimérigachi naru
Sodé no tamoto wo.
Oh! the month of rain![32] All things become damp;—the ends of my sleeves are wet.
Some little time afterward, people told me that if I planted the sotoba[33] upside down, another misfortune of this kind would not come to pass. I had a great many sorrowful doubts about doing such a thing; but at last, on the ninth day of the eighth month, I had the sotoba reversed....