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A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist
London Blackie & Son, Limited, 50 Old Bailey, E.C. Glasgow and Bombay 1910
Land that mused while the world was striving! Land that dreamed while the nations fought! Truth with thy dreamers had forgathered, Peace, in thine isles enclosed, had taught Her secret laws of Beauty to thy sons. Then men spent hours beneath the cherry trees, Or watched the pointed Iris pierce the ground. They cultivated Wisdom on their knees And regulated life in ways profound. Then thy fair daughters ministered to men, Subduing and subdued their graceful form. Dreamland of Beauty, girt by glowing seas! Thou didst appear unfitted for the storm That broke upon thee from the lowering West. Yet thou hast risen and conquered. Thou dost stand, armed as a modern People In the front rank--and yet I say, alas! Who could have wished, in waking thou shouldst spurn The wondrous rightness of thy sheltered past? To be as others are thou seem’st to yearn, And for mere useful ugliness dost cast For ever from thee beauties unsurpassed. True, thou hast beaten them on their own ground, The Goths and Vandals whom as foes were found, Yet I would rather see thee still apart Than soiling thy traditions in the mart. Wouldst thou not weep if thy sweet cherry tree Dropped its light blooms to bear the hard rice grains? O cherry flower of lands! I weep to see Thy falling blooms. The whole World’s loss, thy “gains.”
This daily journal was written primarily because I well knew that time would force the swiftly passing incidents and impressions to blur each other in my memory. Then want of leisure tempted me to send the journal home to friends in place of letters, and the two or three for whom I originally intended it widened the circle by handing it on to many others, until it has, in a way, become public property. Several of those who have read it have asked me to publish it in book form, and although I vowed that I would not add to the already excessive number of books written on Japan, I have decided to publish this just because it was _not_ written with a view to publication. It is this which gives it any claim to attention, and guarantees its veracity. To preserve its character I have stayed my hand where it has often been tempted to change or revise statements which may sometimes seem too hard in the softening light of distance.