The poems above rendered are more than pictorial: they suggest
something of emotion or sentiment. But there are thousands of pictorial
poems that do not; and these would seem mere insipidities to a reader
ignorant of their true purpose. When you learn that some exquisite text
of gold means only, “_Evening-sunlight on the wings of the
water-fowl_,”—or,”_Now in my garden the flowers bloom, and the
butterflies dance_,”—then your first interest in decorative poetry is
apt to wither away. Yet these little texts have a very real merit of
their own, and an intimate relation to Japanese aesthetic feeling and
experience. Like the pictures upon screens and fans and cups, they give
pleasure by recalling impressions of nature, by reviving happy
incidents of travel or pilgrimage, by evoking the memory of beautiful
days. And when this plain fact is fully understood, the persistent
attachment of modern Japanese poets—notwithstanding their University
training—to the ancient poetical methods, will be found reasonable
enough.
I need offer only a very few specimens of the purely pictorial poetry.
The following—mere thumb-nail sketches in verse—are of recent date.