airer was a madness.
I left it for the joy
Of wandering the world,
And heathen-hearted lands have I beheld!
But when at last cloy
Of delight brought sadness
Like lotus to my veins,
And forgetfulness seemed fate,
I had fared unto this shrine
And the moon as now was beaming,
And here have I awaited--and await.

But not for any gift
Of its god, or any grace
That in living or in dying
Men in text or sutra sigh for.
And not for any shrift
Nirvana has, or skies
Where Paradise imperishably smiles.
But only for the sift
Of the wind, that seems to die for
My soul's enduring peace
In the dwelling of the Tomb.
And only for the drift
Of the moon that comes denying
Eternity to everything but Doom.

IN A SHINTO TEMPLE GARDEN

Under the torii, robed in green,
The old priest creeps to the shrine.
Over the bridge the still stork stands,
The crow caws not in the pine.

Far in the distance bugles blow,
War's bloody memory wakes.
The priest prays on--for his sons that are dead,
And the heart within him breaks.

FAR FUJIYAMA

Against the phantom gold of failing skies
I see the ghost of Fujiyama rise
And think of the innumerable eyes
That have beheld its vision sunset-crowned.
The peasant in his field of rice or tea,
The prince in gardens dreaming by the sea,
The priest to whom the semi in the tree
Was but some shrilling soul's incarnate sound.

And as I think upon them, lo, the trance
Of backward time and distant circumstance,
Of Karma's all-remembering necromance,
Lies suddenly before my boundless sight.
It is as if, a moment, Buddhahood
Were given to me; as if understood
At last were vague Nirvana's vaguer good;
As if time were dissolved in living light.

ON MIYAJIMA MOUNTAIN

(_To A. H. R._)

Out on the sea the sampans ride
And the mountains brim with mist and sun.
O we are in Japan again
And the spell is about us spun!
The spell of the old enchanting East,
Of Buddha and many a blissful priest,
The spell that has never, never ceased
To haunt us!

Glad we behold the temple-tops
And the lanterns in religious row
Standing, like acolytes of stone,
Where the pine and camphor grow.
And o'er them the old pagoda prays
Blessing upon their dreaming days,
And upon the eightfold sacred ways
From Sorrow!

Ah, and the torii too is there
Where the tranced