t learn the
lesson Basho[u] can teach us.

That is not to say, that, by taking the letter for the spirit, we should
in any way strive to imitate the hokku form. Good hokkus cannot be
written in English. The thing we have to follow is not a form, but a
spirit. Let us universalize our emotions as much as possible, let us
become impersonal as Shakespeare or Basho[u] was. Let us not gush about
our fine feelings. Let us admit that the highest and noblest feelings
are things that cannot be put into words. Therefore let us conceal them
behind the words we have chosen. Our definition of poetry would then
become that of Edwin Arlington Robinson, that poetry is a language which
tells through a reaction upon our emotional natures something which
cannot be put into words. Unless we set ourselves seriously to the task
of understanding that language is only a means and never an end, poetic
art will be dead in fifty years, from a surfeit of superficial
cleverness and devitalized realism.

In the poems that follow I have taken as my subjects certain designs of
the so-called Uki-oye (or Passing World) school. These prints, made and
produced for purely popular consumption by artists who, whatever their
genius, were despised by the literati of their time, share at least one
characteristic with Japanese poetry, which is, that they exalt the most
trivial and commonplace subjects into the universal significance of
works of art. And therefore I have chosen them to illustrate my
doctrine, which is this: that one must learn to do well small things
before doing things great; that the universe is just as much in the
shape of a hand as it is in armies, politics, astronomy, or the
exhortations of gospel-mongers; that style and technique rest on the
thing conveyed and not the means of conveyance; and that though
sentiment is a good thing, understanding is a better. As for the poems
themselves they are in some cases not Japanese at all, but all
illustrate something of the charm I have found in Japanese poetry and
art. And if they induce others to seek that charm for themselves, my
purpose will have been attained.

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

[Illustration]

_Part I_

_Lovers Embracing_

Force and yielding meet together:
An attack is half repulsed.
Shafts of broken sunlight dissolving
Convolutions of torpid cloud.

_A Picnic Under the Cherry Trees_

The boat drifts to rest
Under the outward sprayi