Steered with deft rudder, Fooled with soft speeches, To my verandah I hale her up.
But this song may have the opposite meaning of a woman alluring a man with soft speeches. As there are no pronouns and no genders in the vernacular, the sense is entirely ambiguous, and the Japanese whom I have consulted do not agree. So I append the original:
“Shita go kaji toru Ano kuchiguruma Noshite nikai Hiki-ageru.”
A fragrant anthology might be compiled of Dodoitsu written in praise of flowers. There is certainly no other country where flowers are so universally loved. The humblest cottager will place in the _tokonoma_ (an alcove with slightly raised daïs) of his living room an iris, a spray of plum-blossom, or a liliputian tree. The noble will devote years of patient cultivation to the production of a chrysanthemum more variegated in colour and shape than those of his neighbour. Wistaria, lotus, convolvulus, and azalea vie with the cherry-blossom in attracting sightseers, who come in crowds to feast their eyes on garden or pond. The arts of flower-arrangement and landscape-gardening may be looked upon as branches of science and philosophy; at least, they command as much veneration. Inevitably, then, is the minstrel’s lyre enwreathed with innumerable garlands. Yet, possibly because of the “pathetic fallacy,” which so constantly pervades similar parterres of English poesy that its absence makes the Japanese flower-plot seem scentless, the fancies which find expression in this class of subject appear particularly trivial. Sometimes a personal preference is stated, as in
Full of set flowers, Full is my chamber; Thou art most stately, White peony.
Sometimes the cut blossom is commiserated, as in
Ah! how my petals Float in the flower-vase; Helpless and rootless; Sad is my lot.
Sometimes the operation of a natural law, to which plants as well as other forms of life are subject, points a moral:
Peonies, roses, Faded, are equal; Only while life blooms Differ the flowers.
But human egoism, which only sees in nature a background to its own existence, has not stained with drops of romantic blood these pale flowerets. No Japanese poet would conceive such a stanza as that in “Maud”--
“There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate; The larkspur listens ‘I hear,’ ‘I hear’; And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’”