and drink. Some of the professors and doctors whose own part in the ceremony was over had also left the palace, and Genji now brought them back and made them compose poem after poem. He also detained such of the courtiers and princes as he knew to care most for poetry; the professors were called upon to compose complete poems[1] while the company, from Genji downwards, tried their hands at quatrains. Teachers of Literature being asked to choose the themes. The summer night was so short that before the time came to read out the poems it was already broad daylight. The reading was done by the Under-secretary to the Council, who, besides being a man of fine appearance, had a remarkably strong and impressive voice, so that his recitations gave every one great pleasure.
That mere enthusiasm should lead young men of high birth, who might so easily have contented themselves with the life of brilliant gaieties to which their position entitled them, to study ‘by the light of the glow-worm at the window or the glimmer of snow on the bough,’[2] was highly gratifying; and such a number of ingenious fancies and comparisons pervaded the minds of the competitors that any one of these compositions might well have been carried to the Land Beyond the Sea without fear of bringing our country into contempt. But women are not supposed to know anything about Chinese literature, and I will not shock your sense of propriety by quoting any of the poems—even that by which Genji so deeply moved his hearers.
Hard upon the ceremony of giving the School Name came that of actual admittance to the College, and finally Yūgiri took up residence in the rooms which had been prepared for him at the Nijō-in. Here he was put in charge of the
