Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/25

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Shogun of Tokugawa family, with the hills and trees, quite apart from his grandfather’s; what a gentle feeling of solemnity, as old as that of a star, what a quiet and golden splendour here! The arrangement might be compared with the feminine beauty of gems most carefully set. When I looked upon the temples from the Mitarashiya, or the “House where you wash your Honourable Hands,” below, they impressed my mind as if a house of dream built by the Dragon Kings underneath the seas, that I and yow often see on the Japanese fan; I looked down, when I stood by the gate tower of the Niwo gods, over that water-fountain below, where the spirits of poesy were soon floating on the sunlight; it was natural to become a passionate adorer of the Nature of May here like Basho, who wrote in his seventeen syllable hokku:

Ah, how sublime—
The green leaves, the young leaves,
In the light of the sun!

I very well understand how Iyeyasu, the Supreme Highness, Lord of the East, that

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