wsiness, drift away!
Leaves of vigor, remain!

After this, all the young folk would jump into the water, to bathe or
swim, in token of their resolve to shed all laziness for the coming
year, and to maintain a vigorous spirit of endeavor.

* * * * *

Yet it was probably in Y['e]do (now T[=o]ky[=o]) that the Tanabata
festival assumed its most picturesque aspects. During the two days
that the celebration lasted,--the sixth and seventh of the seventh
month,--the city used to present the appearance of one vast bamboo
grove; fresh bamboos, with poems attached to them, being erected upon
the roofs of the houses. Peasants were in those days able to do a
great business in bamboos, which were brought into town by hundreds
of wagonloads for holiday use. Another feature of the Y['e]do festival
was the children's procession, in which bamboos, with poems attached
to them, were carried about the city. To each such bamboo there
was also fastened a red plaque on which were painted, in Chinese
characters, the names of the Tanabata stars.

But almost everywhere, under the Tokugawa r['e]gime, the Tanabata
festival used to be a merry holiday for the young people of all
classes,--a holiday beginning with lantern displays before sunrise,
and lasting well into the following night. Boys and girls on that day
were dressed in their best, and paid visits of ceremony to friends and
neighbors.

* * * * *

--The moon of the seventh month used to be called _Tanabata-tsuki_, or
"The Moon of Tanabata." And it was also called _Fumi-tsuki_, or "The
Literary Moon," because during the seventh month poems were everywhere
composed in praise of the Celestial Lovers.

* * * * *

I think that my readers ought to be interested in the following
selection of ancient Japanese poems, treating of the Tanabata legend.
All are from the _Many[=o]sh[=u]_. The _Many[=o]sh[=u]_, or "Gathering
of a Myriad Leaves," is a vast collection of poems composed before the
middle of the eighth century. It was compiled by Imperial order, and
completed early in the ninth century. The number of the poems which
it contains is upwards of four thousand; some being "long poems"
(_naga-uta_), but the great majority _tanka_, or compositions limited
to thirty-one syllables; and the authors were courtiers or high
officials. The first eleven _tanka_ hereafter translated were composed
by Yamag