Over the dunes’ steep escarpments.
The fine dry sand that whistles
Down the long low beaches.
Sand and Spray: A Sea-Symphony comprises the second part of Mr. Fletcher’s volume. This symphony has much of the movement and variety of music. In manner it resembles many of the “Irradiations,” and it is just as well worth reading.
Certainly there will be many who will not like Mr. Fletcher’s work. Dogs will always bark at a new fragrance.
Japanese Lyrics, translated by Lafcadio Hearn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Readers of Lafcadio Hearn will recall the many translations of Japanese haikai poetry which are scattered through his writings. Those translations have been collected in the present volume. They are delicate whisps of thought, tantalizingly suggestive, most of them confined to a sentence. Here are some of them:
If with my sleeve I hide the faint fair color of the dawning sun,—
then, perhaps, in the morning, my lord will remain.