Passages from Shadowings

The night sea does not look like water; it looks like a mind.

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.

A winter robe woven from discarded poems, thread by thread.

One is a roll of cloth for a new kimono,—cloth such as my Western reader never saw. The brown warp is cotton thread; but the woof is soft white paper string, irregularly speckled with black. When closely examined, the black specklings prove to be Chinese and Japanese characters;—for the paper woof is made out of manuscript,—manuscript of poems,—which has been deftly twisted into fine cord, with the written surface outwards. The general effect of the white, black, and brown in the texture is a warm mouse-grey. In many Izumo homes a similar kind of cloth is manufactured for family use; but this piece was woven especially for me by the mother of my pupil. It will make a most comfortable winter-robe; and when wearing it, I shall be literally clothed with poetry,—even as a divinity might be clothed with the sun.

The first time another person's eyes seem to contain the whole world.

THERE is one adolescent moment never to be forgotten,—the moment when the boy learns that this world contains nothing more wonderful than a certain pair of eyes. At first the surprise of the discovery leaves him breathless: instinctively he turns away his gaze. That vision seemed too delicious to be true. But presently he ventures to look again,—fearing with a new fear,—afraid of the reality, afraid also of being observed;—and lo! his doubt dissolves in a new shock of ecstasy. Those eyes are even more wonderful than he had imagined—nay! they become more and yet more entrancing every successive time that he looks at them! Surely in all the universe there cannot be another such pair of eyes! What can lend them such enchantment? Why do they appear divine?... He feels that he must ask somebody to explain,—must propound to older and wiser heads the riddle of his new emotions.

A bell that rings only when the day is darkening.

THIS insect, whose name signifies “day-darkening,” is the most remarkable of all the Japanese cicadae. It is not the finest singer among them; but even as a melodist it ranks second only to the tsuku-tsuku-boshi. It is the special minstrel of twilight, singing only at dawn and sunset; whereas most of the other semi make their music only in the full blaze of day, pausing even when rain-clouds obscure the sun. In Tokyo the higurashi usually appears about the end of June, or the beginning of July. Its wonderful cry,—kana-kana-kana-kana-kana,—beginning always in a very high clear key, and slowly descending, is almost exactly like the sound of a good hand-bell, very quickly rung. It is not a clashing sound, as of violent ringing; it is quick, steady, and of surprising sonority.

The river under the bridge is never the same water, yet the shape stays.

WHO has not at some time leaned over the parapet of a bridge to watch the wrinklings and dimplings of the current below,—to wonder at the trembling permanency of surface-shapes that never change, though the substance of them is never for two successive moments the same? The mystery of the spectacle fascinates; and it is worth thinking about. Symbols of the riddle of our own being are those shuddering forms. In ourselves likewise the substance perpetually changes with the flow of the Infinite Stream; but the shapes, though ever agitated by various inter-opposing forces, remain throughout the years.

The rose is not a compliment; it is a warning with petals.

BY the Japanese a certain kind of girl is called a Rose-Girl,—Bara-Musume. Perhaps my reader will think of Tennyson’s “queen-rose of the rosebud-garden of girls,” and imagine some analogy between the Japanese and the English idea of femininity symbolized by the rose. But there is no analogy whatever. The Bara-Musume is not so called because she is delicate and sweet, nor because she blushes, nor because she is rosy; indeed, a rosy face is not admired in Japan. No; she is compared to a rose chiefly for the reason that a rose has thorns. The man who tries to pull a Japanese rose is likely to hurt his fingers. The man who tries to win a Bara-Musume is apt to hurt himself much more seriously,—even unto death. It were better, alone and unarmed, to meet a tiger than to invite the caress of a Rose-Girl.

The real terror of a ghost is not death. It is contact.

Now I venture to state boldly that the common fear of ghosts is the fear of being touched by ghosts,—or, in other words, that the imagined Supernatural is dreaded mainly because of its imagined power to touch. Only to touch, remember!—not to wound or to kill.

What falls as blood and hardens into something priceless.

No sooner had Totaro spoken these words than the Samebito uttered a strange wild cry of pain, and began to weep bitterly. And as he wept, great tears of blood streamed from his green eyes and rolled down his black cheeks and dripped upon the floor. And, falling, they were blood; but, having fallen, they became hard and bright and beautiful,—became jewels of inestimable price, rubies splendid as crimson fire. For when men of the sea weep, their tears become precious stones.