le sampans up the river glide,
With set sails vanishing and slow;
In the blue west the mountains hide,
As visions that too soon will go.

Across the rice-lands, flooded deep,
The peasant peacefully wades on--
As, in unfurrowed vales of sleep,
A phantom out of voidness drawn.

Over the temple cawing flies
The crow with carrion in his beak.
Buddha within lifts not his eyes
In pity or reproval meek;

Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow
A respite from the blinding sun,
The old priest--dreaming painless how
Nirvana's calm will come when won.

"All is illusion, _Maya_, all
The world of will," the spent East seems
Whispering in me; "and the call
Of Life is but a call of dreams."

A JAPANESE MOTHER

(IN TIME OF WAR)

The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops,
Down on the brink of the river.
My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse--
The bamboo copse where the rice field stops:
The bamboos sigh and shiver.

The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill;
I must pray to Inari.
I hear her calling me low and chill--
Low and chill when the wind is still
At night and the skies hang starry.

And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead!
Your lord who went to battle.
How shall your baby now be fed,
Ukibo fed, with rice and bread--
What if I hush his prattle?"

The red moon rises as I slip back,
And the bamboo stems are swaying.
Inari was deaf--and yet the lack,
The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack,
I know not why--with praying.

For though Inari cared not at all,
Some other god was kinder.
I wonder why he has heard my call,
My giftless call--and what shall befall?...
Hope has but left me blinder!

THE DEAD GODS

I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss
Which is Oblivion, the house of Death.
I thought there blew upon my soul the breath
Of time that was but never more can be.

Ten thousand years within its void I thought
I lay, blind, deaf, and motionless, until--
Though with no eye nor ear--I felt the thrill
Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh.

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told
He once had been a god--"Persephone,
Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we
Are king and queen of Tartar