Say--scenting morn's sun-lit air,
Blows the cherry wild and fair!"

Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and
the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition
which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the
morning sun_.

[Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.]

The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild--in the sense
of natural--growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental
qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its
essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But
its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and
grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ aesthetic sense as no other flower
can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses,
which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are
hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she
clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop
untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy
odors--all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no
dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at
the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light
fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its
showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is
volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious
ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is
something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the
_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to
illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more
serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of
beauteous day.

When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his
heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that
the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the
whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a
time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs
and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily
tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one
is the sakura the flower of the nation.

Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanes