Shadowings Part 24

[114] A wooden lath, bearing Buddhist texts, planted above graves. For a full account of the sotoba see _my Exotics and Retrospectives_: "The Literature of the Dead."

Then--how fearful a thing is the longing of a person[115]--the grave of Seiza split asunder; and the form of Seiza rose up therefrom and spoke.

_Yanrei!_

[115] In the original:--_Hito no omoi wa osoroshi mono yo!_--("how fearful a thing is the thinking of a person!"). The word _omoi_, used here in the sense of "longing," refers to the weird power of Seiza's dying wish to see his sweetheart. Even after his burial, this longing has the strength to burst open the tomb.

--In the old English ballad of "William and Marjorie" (see Child: vol. ii. p. 151) there is also a remarkable fancy about the opening and closing of a grave:--

She followed him high, she followed him low, Till she came to yon churchyard green; _And there the deep grave opened up_, And young William he lay down.

"Ah! is not this O-Kichi that has come? Kind indeed it was to have come to me from so far away! My O-Kichi, do not weep thus.

Never again--even though you weep--can we be united in this world. But as you love me truly, I pray you to set some fragrant flowers before my tomb, and to have a Buddhist service said for me upon the anniversary of my death."

_Yanrei!_

And with these words the form of Seiza vanished. "O wait, wait for me!" cried O-Kichi,--"wait one little moment![116] I cannot let you return alone!--I shall go with you in a little time!"

_Yanrei!_

[116] With this episode compare the close of the English ballad "Sweet William's Ghost" (Child: vol. ii., page 148):--

"O stay, my only true love, stay!"

The constant Margaret cried: Wan grew her cheeks; she closed her een, Stretched her soft limbs, and died.

Then quickly she went beyond the temple-gate to a moat some four or five _cho_[117] distant; and having filled her sleeves with small stones, into the deep water she cast her forlorn body.

_Yanrei!_

[117] A _cho_ is about one fifteenth of a mile.

And now I shall terminate this brief excursion into unfamiliar song-fields by the citation of two Buddhist pieces. The first is from the famous work _Gempei Seisuiki_ ("Account of the Prosperity and Decline of the Houses of Gen and Hei"), probably composed during the latter part of the twelfth, or at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It is written in the measure called _Imayo_,--that is to say, in short lines alternately of seven and of five syllables (7, 5; 7, 5; 7, 5, _ad libitum_). The other philosophical composition is from a collection of songs called _Ryutachi-bushi_ ("Ryutachi Airs"), belonging to the sixteenth century:--

I

(_Measure, Imayo_)

Sama mo kokoro mo Kawaru kana!

Otsuru namida wa Taki no mizu: Myo-ho-renge no Ike to nari; Guze no fune ni Sao sas.h.i.te; Shizumu waga mi wo Nose-tamae!

Both form and mind-- Lo! how these change!

The falling of tears Is like the water of a cataract.

Let them become the Pool Of the Lotos of the Good Law!

Poling thereupon The Boat of Salvation, Vouchsafe that my sinking Body may ride!

II

(_Period of Bunroku--1592-1596_)

Who twice shall live his youth?

What flower faded blooms again?

Fugitive as dew Is the form regretted, Seen only In a moment of dream.

FANTASIES

[Decoration]

... Vainly does each, as he glides, Fable and dream Of the lands which the River of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast, Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Noctilucae

[Decoration]

THE moon had not yet risen; but the vast of the night was all seething with stars, and bridged by a Milky Way of extraordinary brightness.

There was no wind; but the sea, far as sight could reach, was running in ripples of fire,--a vision of infernal beauty. Only the ripplings were radiant (between them was blackness absolute);--and the luminosity was amazing. Most of the undulations were yellow like candle-flame; but there were crimson lampings also,--and azure, and orange, and emerald.

And the sinuous flickering of all seemed, not a pulsing of many waters, but a laboring of many wills,--a fleeting conscious and monstrous,--a writhing and a swarming incalculable, as of dragon-life in some depth of Erebus.

And life indeed was making the sinister splendor of that spectacle--but life infinitesimal, and of ghostliest delicacy,--life illimitable, yet ephemeral, flaming and fading in ceaseless alternation over the whole round of waters even to the sky-line, above which, in the vaster abyss, other countless lights were throbbing with other spectral colors.

Watching, I wondered and I dreamed. I thought of the Ultimate Ghost revealed in that scintillation tremendous of Night and Sea;--quickening above me, in systems aglow with awful fusion of the past dissolved, with vapor of the life again to be;--quickening also beneath me, in meteor-gushings and constellations and nebulosities of colder fire,--till I found myself doubting whether the million ages of the sun-star could really signify, in the flux of perpetual dissolution, anything more than the momentary sparkle of one expiring noctiluca.

Even with the doubt, the vision changed. I saw no longer the sea of the ancient East, with its shudderings of fire, but that Flood whose width and depth and alt.i.tude are one with the Night of Eternity,--the sh.o.r.eless and timeless Sea of Death and Birth. And the luminous haze of a hundred millions of suns,--the Arch of the Milky Way,--was a single smouldering surge in the flow of the Infinite Tides.

Yet again there came a change. I saw no more that vapory surge of suns; but the living darkness streamed and thrilled about me with infinite sparkling; and every sparkle was beating like a heart,--beating out colors like the tints of the sea-fires. And the lampings of all continually flowed away, as shivering threads of radiance, into illimitable Mystery....

Then I knew myself also a phosphor-point,--one fugitive floating sparkle of the measureless current;--and I saw that the light which was mine shifted tint with each changing of thought. Ruby it sometimes shone, and sometimes sapphire: now it was flame of topaz; again, it was fire of emerald. And the meaning of the changes I could not fully know. But thoughts of the earthly life seemed to make the light burn red; while thoughts of supernal being,--of ghostly beauty and of ghostly bliss,--seemed to kindle ineffable rhythms of azure and of violet.

But of white lights there were none in all the Visible. And I marvelled.

Then a Voice said to me:--

"The White are of the Alt.i.tudes. By the blending of the billions they are made. Thy part is to help to their kindling. Even as the color of thy burning, so is the worth of thee. For a moment only is thy quickening; yet the light of thy pulsing lives on: by thy thought, in that shining moment, thou becomest a Maker of G.o.ds."