A small selection of _hokku_ (1) on butterflies will help to illustrate
Japanese interest in the aæsthetic side of the subject. Some are
pictures only,—tiny color-sketches made with seventeen syllables; some
are nothing more than pretty fancies, or graceful suggestions;—but the
reader will find variety. Probably he will not care much for the verses
in themselves. The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigrammatic sort
is a taste that must be slowly acquired; and it is only by degrees,
after patient study, that the possibilities of such composition can be
fairly estimated. Hasty criticism has declared that to put forward any
serious claim on behalf of seventeen-syllable poems “would be absurd.”
But what, then, of Crashaw’s famous line upon the miracle at the
marriage feast in Cana?—