to find the natural beauty, on which my imagination should have play enough, I bowed to the Poet Yeiki for good-night, and thanked him for the most interesting talk, although we had spoken scarcely a word, but I was perfectly tickled in delight as already then the old story of Emerson and Carlyle who had a happy chat in silence was known to me. When I left him, the moon was quite high, under whose golden blessing all the trees and birds hurried to dream; it was exactly such a night on which only two or three year ago I wrote the following lines:
“Across the song of night and moon,
(O perfume of perfumes!)
My soul, as a wind
Whose heart’s too full to sing,
Only roams astray …”
Indeed, how I wandered that night, now thinking of this poet, then on that hokku poem; I clearly remember it was the very night that I felt fully the beauty of the following impromptu in hokku by Basho:
“Shall I knock
At Miidera Temple’s gate?
Ah, moon of to-night!”
