'And this,' the reader may say,--'this is all that you went forth to
see: a torii, some shells, a small damask snake, some stones?'
It is true. And nevertheless I know that I am bewitched. There is a
charm indefinable about the place--that sort of charm which comes with a
little ghostly thrill never to be forgotten.
Not of strange sights alone is this charm made, but of numberless subtle
sensations and ideas interwoven and inter-blended: the sweet sharp
scents of grove and sea; the blood-brightening, vivifying touch of
the free wind; the dumb appeal of ancient mystic mossy things; vague
reverence evoked by knowledge of treading soil called holy for a
thousand years; and a sense of sympathy, as a human duty, compelled by
the vision of steps of rock worn down into shapelessness by the pilgrim
feet of vanished generations.
And other memories ineffaceable: the first sight of the sea-girt City
of Pearl through a fairy veil of haze; the windy approach to the lovely
island over the velvety soundless brown stretch of sand; the weird
majesty of the giant gate of bronze; the queer, high-sloping, fantastic,
quaintly gabled street, flinging down sharp shadows of aerial balconies;
the flutter of coloured draperies in the sea wind, and of flags with
their riddles of lettering; the pearly glimmering of the astonishing
shops.
And impressions of the enormous day--the day of the Land of the Gods--a
loftier day than ever our summers know; and the glory of the view
from those green sacred silent heights between sea and sun; and the
remembrance of the sky, a sky spiritual as holiness, a sky with clouds
ghost-pure and white as the light itself--seeming, indeed, not clouds
but dreams, or souls of Bodhisattvas about to melt for ever into some
blue Nirvana.
And the romance of Benten, too,--the Deity of Beauty, the Divinity of
Love, the Goddess of Eloquence. Rightly is she likewise named Goddess of
the Sea. For is not the Sea most ancient and most excellent of
Speakers--the eternal Poet, chanter of that mystic hymn whose rhythm
shakes the world, whose mighty syllables no man may learn?