"On the four seas Still are the waves; The world is at peace. Soft blow the time-winds,[6] Rustling not the branches. In such an age Blest are the very firs, In that they meet To grow old together."
Captain Brinkley's translation of _Ataka_ is in somewhat similar style to the preceding, a mixture of prose and "verse" of short lines like the following example--
"From traveller's vestment Pendent bells ring notes Of pilgrims' foot-falls; And from road-stained sleeves Pendent dew-drops presage Tears of last meetings."
To the same school of translators belongs Mr. Sansom,[7] though he is slightly less literal than Mr. Dickins. He renders the exquisite fragment from the _Sakuragawa_ as follows--
"The waters flow, the flowers fall, forever lasts the Spring, The moon shines cold, the wind blows high, the cranes do not fly home. The flowers that grow in the rocks are scarlet, and light up the stream. The trees that grow by the caverns are green and contain the breeze The blossoms open like brocade, the brimming pools are deep and blue."
All the time we are reading this the magic of suggestion is working, and we would fain let our minds float away into the land of spring; but our attention is brought plumping down to the bodily presentation of the thoughts and our intellect is set at work to see how the lines might have been made to scan, or to run in some form of rhythm. So long as they do just scan and have a passable rhythm, we do not think of the poetical qualities of the translation, but when they jolt us along our attention is constantly diverted from the higher theme to the lesser subject of English grammar and versification.
So that I have endeavoured in my translations to make the lines run smoothly enough to be read aloud without much irritation; and though I have doubtless not fully succeeded, I have tried to give them as much verbal beauty as was possible within the narrow limits afforded me by the literal Japanese meaning. In this my collaborator, Prof. Sakurai, has held the rein on me at times when I would have liked to run away with some poetical conceits, and it is owing entirely to his tireless exertions that the result has a fair degree of accuracy. I must relieve him of too great a responsibility, however, for I confess that here and there where it seemed to me imperative to put in a word or two more than was in the original in order to convey the necessary impression to an English reader, or where several lines of metre would have been upset if he wouldn't let me have the word I wanted, I have just taken the bit between my teeth and run away from him. But this has happened seldom, and on the whole I think it will be found that the English version bears close comparison with the Japanese.