Three men are trying to measure a pine tree
By the length of their outstretched arms.
Trying to span the bole of a huge pine tree
By the spread of their lifted arms.
Attempting to compress its girth
Within the limit of their extended arms.
Beyond, Fuji,
Majestic, inevitable,
Wreathed over by wisps of cloud.
The clouds draw about the mountain,
But there are gaps.
The men reach about the pine tree,
But their hands break apart;
The rough bark escapes their hand-clasps;
The tree is unencircled.
Three men are trying to measure the stem of a gigantic pine tree,
With their arms,
At Mishima in the Province of Kai.
Furnaces are burning good Cumberland coal at the rate of twenty-six
tons per diem, and the paddle-wheels turn round and round in an iris
of spray. She noses her way through a wallowing sea; foots it, bit
by bit, over the slanting wave slopes; pants along, thrust forward by
her breathing furnaces, urged ahead by the wind draft flattening
against her taut sails.
The Commodore, leaning over the taffrail, sees the peak of Madeira
sweep up out of the haze. The _Mississippi_ glides into smooth
water, and anchors under the lee of the "Desertas."
Ah! the purple bougainvilia! And the sweet smells of the heliotrope
and geranium hedges! Ox-drawn sledges clattering over cobbles--what
a fine pause in an endless voyaging. Stars and stripes demanding
five hundred tons of coal, ten thousand gallons of water, resting for
a moment on a round stepping-stone, with the drying sails slatting
about in the warm wind.
"Get out your accordion, Jim, and give us the 'Suwannee River' to
show those Dagoes what a tune is. Pipe up with the chorus, boys.
Let her go."
The green water flows past Madeira. Flows under the paddle-boards,
making them clip and clap. The green water washes along the sides of
the Commodore's steam flagship and passes away to leeward.
"Hitch up your trowsers, Black Face, and do a horn-pipe. It's a fine
quiet night for a double shuffle. Keep her going, Jim. Louder.
That's the ticket. Gosh, but you can spin, Blackey!"
The road is hilly
Outside the Tiger Gate,
And striped with shadows from a bow moon
Slowly sinking to the horizon.
The roadway twinkles with the bobbing of lanterns,
Melon-shaped, round, oblong,
Lighting the steps of those who pass along it;
And there is a sweet singing of many _semi_,
From the cages which an insect-seller
Carries on his back.
Westward of the Canaries, in a wind-blazing sea. Engineers, there,
extinguish the furnaces; carpenters, quick, your screwdrivers and
mallets, and unship the paddle-boards. Break out her sails,
quartermasters, the wind will carry her faster than she can steam,
for the trades have her now, and are whipping her along in fine
clipper style. Key-guns, your muzzles shine like basalt above the
tumbling waves. Polished basalt cameoed upon malachite.
Yankee-doodle-dandy! A fine upstanding ship, clouded with canvas,
slipping along like a trotting filly out of the Commodore's own
stables. White sails and sailors, blue-coated officers, and red in a
star sparked through the claret decanter on the Commodore's luncheon
table.
The Commodore is writing to his wife, to be posted at the next
stopping place. Two years is a long time to be upon the sea.
Nigi-oi of Matsuba-ya
Celebrated oiran,
Courtesan of unrivalled beauty,
The great silk mercer, Mitsui,
Counts himself a fortunate man
As he watches her parade in front of him
In her robes of glazed blue silk
Embroidered with singing nightingales.
He puffs his little silver pipe
And arranges a fold of her dress.
He parts it at the neck
And laughs when the falling plum-blossoms
Tickle her naked breasts.
The next morning he makes out a bill
To the Director of the Dutch Factory at Nagasaki
For three times the amount of the goods
Forwarded that day in two small junks
In the care of a trusted clerk.
The North-east trades have smoothed away into hot, blue doldrums.
Paddle-wheels to the rescue. Thank God, we live in an age of
invention. What air there is, is dead ahead. The deck is a bed of
cinders, we wear a smoke cloud like a funeral plume. Funeral--of
whom? Of the little heathens inside the Gate? Wait! Wait! These
monkey-men have got to trade, Uncle Sam has laid his plans with care,
see those black guns sizzling there. "It's deuced hot," says a
lieutenant, "I wish I could look in at a hop in Newport this evening."
The one hundred and sixty streets in the Sanno quarter
Are honey-gold,
Honey-gold from the gold-foil screens in the houses,
Honey-gold from the fresh yellow mats;
The lintels are draped with bright colours,
And from eaves and poles
Red and white paper lanterns
Glitter and swing.
Through the one hundred and sixty decorated
streets of the Sanno quarter,
Trails the procession,
With a bright slowness,
To the music of flutes and drums.
Great white sails of cotton
Belly out along the honey-gold streets.
Sword bearers,
Spear bearers,
Mask bearers,
Grinning masks of mountain genii,
And a white cock on a drum
Above a purple sheet.
Over the flower hats of the people,
Shines the sacred palanquin,
"Car of gentle motion,"
Upheld by fifty men,
Stalwart servants of the god,
Bending under the weight of mirror-black lacquer,
Of pillars and roof-tree
Wrapped in chased and gilded copper.
Portly silk tassels sway to the marching of feet,
Wreaths of gold and silver flowers
Shoot sudden scintillations at the gold-foil screens.
The golden phoenix on the roof of the palanquin
Spreads its wings,
And seems about to take flight
Over the one hundred and sixty streets
Straight into the white heart
Of the curved blue sky.
Six black oxen,
With white and red trappings,
Draw platforms on which are musicians, dancers, actors,
Who posture and sing,
Dance and parade,
Up and down the honey-gold streets,
To the sweet playing of flutes,
And the ever-repeating beat of heavy drums,
To the constant banging of heavily beaten drums,
To the insistent repeating rhythm of beautiful great drums.
Across the equator and panting down to Saint Helena, trailing smoke
like a mourning veil. Jamestown jetty, and all the officers in the
ship making at once for Longwood. Napoleon! Ah, tales--tales--with
nobody to tell them. A bronze eagle caged by floating woodwork. A
heart burst with beating on a flat drop-curtain of sea and sky.
Nothing now but pigs in a sty. Pigs rooting in the Emperor's
bedroom. God be praised, we have a plumed smoking ship to take us
away from this desolation.
"Boney was a warrior
Away-i-oh;
Boney was a warrior,
John François."
"Oh, shut up, Jack, you make me sick. Those pigs are like worms
eating a corpse. Bah!"
The ladies,
Wistaria Blossom, Cloth-of-Silk, and Deep Snow,
With their ten attendants,
Are come to Asakusa
To gaze at peonies.
To admire crimson-carmine peonies,
To stare in admiration at bomb-shaped, white and sulphur peonies,
To caress with a soft finger
Single, rose-flat peonies,
Tight, incurved, red-edged peonies,
Spin-wheel circle, amaranth peonies.
To smell the acrid pungence of peony blooms,
And dream for months afterwards
Of the temple garden at Asakusa,
Where they walked together
Looking at peonies.
The Gate! The Gate! The far-shining Gate! Pat your guns and thank
your stars you have not come too late. The Orient's a sleepy place,
as all globe-trotters say. We'll get there soon enough, my lads, and
carry it away. That's a good enough song to round the Cape with, and
there's the Table Cloth on Table Mountain and we've drawn a Lead over
half the curving world. Three cheers for Old Glory, fellows.
A Daimio's procession
Winds between two green hills,
A line of thin, sharp, shining, pointed spears
Above red coats
And yellow mushroom hats.
A man leading an ox
Has cast himself upon the ground,
He rubs his forehead in the dust,
While his ox gazes with wide, moon eyes
At the glittering spears
Majestically parading
Between two green hills.
Down, down, down, to the bottom of the map; but we must up again,
high on the other side. America, sailing the seas of a planet to
stock the shop counters at home. Commerce-raiding a nation; pulling
apart the curtains of a temple and calling it trade. Magnificent
mission! Every shop-till in every bye-street will bless you. Force
the shut gate with the muzzles of your black cannon. Then wait--wait
for fifty years--and see who has conquered. But now the
_Mississippi_ must brave the Cape, in a crashing of bitter seas. The
wind blows East, the wind blows West, there is no rest under these
clashing clouds. Petrel whirl by like torn newspapers along a
street. Albatrosses fly close to the mastheads. Dread purrs over
this stormy ocean, and the smell of the water is the dead, oozing
dampness of tombs.
Tiger rain on the temple bridge of carved green-stone,
Slanting tiger lines of rain on the lichened lanterns
of the gateway,
On the stone statues of mythical warriors.
Striped rain making the bells of the pagoda roofs flutter,
Tiger-footing on the bluish stones of the court-yard,
Beating, snapping, on the cheese-rounds of open umbrellas,
Licking, tiger-tongued, over the straw mat which
a pilgrim wears upon his shoulders,
Gnawing, tiger-toothed, into the paper mask
Which he carries on his back.
Tiger-clawed rain scattering the peach-blossoms,
Tiger tails of rain lashing furiously among the cryptomerias.
"Land--O." Mauritius. Stepping-stone four. The coaling ships have
arrived, and the shore is a hive of Negroes, and Malays, and Lascars,
and Chinese. The clip and clatter of tongues is unceasing. "What
awful brutes!" "Obviously, but the fruits they sell are good."
"Food, fellows, bully good food." Yankee money for pine-apples,
shaddocks, mangoes. "Who were Paul and Virginia?" "Oh, a couple of
spooneys who died here, in a shipwreck, because the lady wouldn't
take off her smock." "I say, Fred, that's a shabby way to put it.
You've no sentiment." "Maybe. I don't read much myself, and when I
do, I prefer United States, something like old Artemus Ward, for
instance." "Oh, dry up, and let's get some donkeys and go for a
gallop. We've got to begin coaling to-morrow, remember."
The beautiful dresses,
Blue, Green, Mauve, Yellow;
And the beautiful green pointed hats
Like Chinese porcelains!
See, a band of geisha
Is imitating the state procession of a Corean Ambassador,
Under painted streamers,
On an early afternoon.
The hot sun burns the tar up out of the deck. The paddle-wheels
turn, flinging the cupped water over their shoulders. Heat smoulders
along the horizon. The shadow of the ship floats off the starboard
quarter, floats like a dark cloth upon the sea. The watch is pulling
on the topsail halliards:
"O Sally Brown of New York City,
Ay ay, roll and go."
Like a tired beetle, the _Mississippi_ creeps over the flat, glass
water, creeps on, breathing heavily. Creeps--creeps--and sighs and
settles at Pointe de Galle, Ceylon.
Spice islands speckling the Spanish Main. Fairy tales and stolen
readings. Saint John's Eve! Mid-summer Madness! Here it is all
true. But the smell of the spice-trees is not so nice as the smell
of new-mown hay on the Commodore's field at Tarrytown. But what can
one say to forests of rose-wood, satin-wood, ebony! To the talipot
tree, one leaf of which can cover several people with its single
shade. Trade! Trade! Trade in spices for an earlier generation.
We dream of lacquers and precious stones. Of spinning telegraph
wires across painted fans. Ceylon is an old story, ours will be the
glory of more important conquests.
But wait--wait. No one is likely to force the Gate. The smoke of
golden Virginia tobacco floats through the blue palms. "You say you
killed forty elephants with this rifle!" "Indeed, yes, and a
trifling bag, too."
Down the ninety-mile rapids
Of the Heaven Dragon River,
He came,
With his bowmen,
And his spearmen,
Borne in a gilded palanquin,
To pass the Winter in Yedo
By the Shōgun's decree.
To pass the Winter idling in the Yoshiwara,
While his bowmen and spearmen
Gamble away their rusted weapons
Every evening
At the Hour of the Cock.
Her Britannic Majesty's frigate _Cleopatra_ salutes the _Mississippi_
as she sails into the harbour of Singapore. Vessels galore choke the
wharves. From China, Siam, Malaya; Sumatra, Europe, America. This
is the bargain counter of the East. Goods--Goods, dumped ashore to
change boats and sail on again. Oaths and cupidity; greasy clothes
and greasy dollars wound into turbans. Opium and birds'-nests
exchanged for teas, cassia, nankeens; gold thread bartered for
Brummagem buttons. Pocket knives told off against teapots. Lots and
lots of cheap damaged porcelains, and trains of silken bales awaiting
advantageous sales to Yankee merchantmen. The figure-head of the
_Mississippi_ should be a beneficent angel. With her guns to
persuade, she should lay the foundation of such a market on the
shores of Japan. "We will do what we can," writes the Commodore, in
his cabin.
Outside the drapery shop of Taketani Sabai,
Strips of dyed cloth are hanging out to dry.
Fine Arimitsu cloth,
Fine blue and white cloth,
Falling from a high staging,
Falling like falling water,
Like blue and white unbroken water
Sliding over a high cliff,
Like the Ono Fall on the Kisokaido Road.
Outside the shop of Taketani Sabai,
They have hung the fine dyed cloth
In strips out to dry.
Romance and heroism; and all to make one dollar two. Through grey
fog and fresh blue breezes, through heat, and sleet, and sheeted
rain. For centuries men have pursued the will-o'-the-wisp--trade.
And they have got--what? All civilization weighed in twopenny scales
and fastened with string. A sailing planet packed in a dry-goods
box. Knocks, and shocks, and blocks of extended knowledge, contended
for and won. Cloves and nutmegs, and science stowed among the
grains. Your gains are not in silver, mariners, but in the songs of
violins, and the thin voices whispering through printed books.
"It looks like a dinner-plate," thinks the officer of the watch, as
the _Mississippi_ sails up the muddy river to Canton, with the
Dragon's Cave Fort on one side, and the Girl's Shoe Fort on the other.
The Great Gate looms in a distant mist, and the anchored squadron
waits and rests, but its coming is as certain as the equinoxes, and
the lightning bolts of its guns are ready to tear off centuries like
husks of corn.
The Commodore sips bottled water from Saratoga, and makes out a
report for the State Department. The men play pitch-and-toss, and
the officers poker, and the betting gives heavy odds against the
little monkey-men.
On the floor of the reception room of the Palace
They have laid a white quilt,
And on the quilt, two red rugs;
And they have set up two screens of white paper
To hide that which should not be seen.
At the four corners, they have placed lanterns,
And now they come.
Six attendants,
Three to sit on either side of the condemned man,
Walking slowly.
Three to the right,
Three to the left,
And he between them
In his dress of ceremony
With the great wings.
Shadow wings, thrown by the lantern light,
Trail over the red rugs to the polished floor,
Trail away unnoticed,
For there is a sharp glitter from a dagger
Borne past the lanterns on a silver tray.
"O my Master,
I would borrow your sword,
For it may be a consolation to you
To perish by a sword to which you are accustomed."
Stone, the face of the condemned man,
Stone, the face of the executioner,
And yet before this moment
These were master and pupil,
Honoured and according homage,
And this is an act of honourable devotion.
Each face is passive,
Hewed as out of strong stone,
Cold as a statue above a temple porch.
Down slips the dress of ceremony to the girdle.
Plunge the dagger to its hilt.
A trickle of blood runs along the white flesh
And soaks into the girdle silk.
Slowly across from left to right,
Slowly, upcutting at the end,
But the executioner leaps to his feet,
Poises the sword--
Did it flash, hover, descend?
There is a thud, a horrible rolling,
And the heavy sound of a loosened, falling body,
Then only the throbbing of blood
Spurting into the red rugs.
For he who was a man is that thing
Crumpled up on the floor,
Broken, and crushed into the red rugs.
The friend wipes the sword,
And his face is calm and frozen
As a stone statue on a Winter night
Above a temple gateway.
PART II
Four vessels giving easily to the low-running waves and cat's-paw
breezes of a Summer sea. July, 1853, Mid-Century, but just on the
turn. Mid-Century, with the vanishing half fluttering behind on a
foam-bubbled wake. Four war ships steering for the "Land of Great
Peace," caparisoned in state, cleaving a jewelled ocean to a Dragon
Gate. Behind it, the quiet of afternoon. Golden light reflecting
from the inner sides of shut portals. War is an old wives' tale, a
frail beautiful embroidery of other ages. The panoply of battle
fades. Arrows rust in arsenals, spears stand useless on their butts
in vestibules. Cannon lie unmounted in castle yards, and rats and
snakes make nests in them and rear their young in unmolested
satisfaction.
The sun of Mid-Summer lies over the "Land of Great Peace," and behind
the shut gate they do not hear the paddle-wheels of distant vessels
unceasingly turning and advancing, through the jewelled
scintillations of the encircling sea.
_Susquehanna_ and _Mississippi_, steamers, towing _Saratoga_ and
_Plymouth_, sloops of war. Moving on in the very eye of the wind,
with not a snip of canvas upon their slim yards. Fugi!--a point
above nothing, for there is a haze. Stop gazing, that is the bugle
to clear decks and shot guns. We must be prepared, as we run up the
coast straight to the Bay of Yedo. "I say, fellows, those boats
think they can catch us, they don't know that this is Yankee steam."
Bang! The shore guns are at work. And that smoke-ball would be a
rocket at night, but we cannot see the gleam in this sunshine.
Black with people are the bluffs of Uraga, watching the "fire-ships,"
lipping windless up the bay. Say all the prayers you know, priests
of Shinto and Buddha. Ah! The great splashing of the wheels stops,
a chain rattles. The anchor drops at the Hour of the Ape.
A clock on the Commodore's chest of drawers strikes five with a
silvery tinkle.
Boats are coming from all directions. Beautiful boats of unpainted
wood, broad of beam, with tapering sterns, and clean runs. Swiftly
they come, with shouting rowers standing to their oars. The shore
glitters with spears and lacquered hats. Compactly the boats
advance, and each carries a flag--white-black-white--and the stripes
break and blow. But the tow-lines are cast loose when the rowers
would make them fast to the "black ships," and those who would climb
the chains slip back dismayed, checked by a show of cutlasses,
pistols, pikes. "_Naru Hodo!_" This is amazing, unprecedented! Even
the Vice-Governor, though he boards the Susquehanna, cannot see the
Commodore. "His High Mighty Mysteriousness, Lord of the Forbidden
Interior," remains in his cabin. Extraordinary! Horrible!
Rockets rise from the forts, and their trails of sparks glitter
faintly now, and their bombs break in faded colours as the sun goes
down.
Bolt the gate, monkey-men, but it is late to begin turning locks so
rusty and worn.
Darkness over rice-fields and hills. The Gold Gate hides in shadow.
Upon the indigo-dark water, millions of white jelly-fish drift, like
lotus-petals over an inland lake. The land buzzes with prayer, low,
dim smoke hanging in air; and every hill gashes and glares with
shooting fires. The fire-bells are ringing in double time, and a
heavy swinging boom clashes from the great bells of temples.
Couriers lash their horses, riding furiously to Yedo; junks and
scull-boats arrive hourly at Shinagawa with news; runners, bearing
dispatches, pant in government offices. The hollow doors of the
Great Gate beat with alarms. The charmed Dragon Country shakes and
trembles, Iyéyoshi, twelfth Shōgun of the Tokugawa line,
sits in his city. Sits in the midst of one million, two hundred
thousand trembling souls, and his mind rolls forward and back like a
ball on a circular runway, and finds no goal. Roll, poor distracted
mind of a sick man. What can you do but wait, trusting in your
Dragon Gate, for how should you know that it is rusted.
But there is a sign over the "black ships." A wedge-shaped tail of
blue sparklets, edged with red, trails above them as though a Dragon
were pouring violet sulphurous spume from steaming nostrils, and the
hulls and rigging are pale, quivering, bright as Taira ghosts on the
sea of Nagato.
Up and down walk sentinels, fore and aft, and at the side gangways.
There is a pile of round shot and four stands of grape beside each
gun; and carbines, and pistols, and cutlasses, are laid in the boats.
Floating arsenals--floating sample-rooms for the wares of a
continent; shop-counters, flanked with weapons, adrift among the
jelly-fishes.
Eight bells, and the meteor washes away before the wet, white wisps
of dawn.
Through the countrysides of the "Land of Great Peace," flowers are
blooming. The greenish-white, sterile blossoms of hydrangeas boom
faintly, like distant inaudible bombs of colour exploding in the
woods. Weigelias prick the pink of their slender trumpets against
green backgrounds. The fan-shaped leaves of ladies' slippers rustle
under cryptomerias.
Midsummer heat curls about the cinnamon-red tree-boles along the
Tokaido. The road ripples and glints with the passing to and fro,
and beyond, in the roadstead, the "black ships" swing at their
anchors and wait.
All up and down the Eastern shore of the bay is a feverish digging,
patting, plastering. Forts to be built in an hour to resist the
barbarians, if, peradventure, they can. Japan turned to, what will
it not do! Fishermen and palanquin-bearers, pack-horse-leaders and
farm-labourers, even women and children, pat and plaster. Disaster
batters at the Dragon Gate. Batters at the doors of Yedo, where
Samurai unpack their armour, and whet and feather their arrows.
Daimios smoke innumerable pipes, and drink unnumbered cups of tea,
discussing--discussing--"What is to be done?" The Shōgun is
no Emperor. What shall they do if the "hairy devils" take a notion
to go to Kiōto! Then indeed would the Tokugawa fall. The
prisons are crammed with those who advise opening the Gate. Open the
Gate, and let the State scatter like dust to the winds! Absurd!
Unthinkable! Suppress the "brocade pictures" of the floating
monsters with which book-sellers and picture-shop keepers are
delighting and affrighting the populace. Place a ban on speech.
Preach, inert Daimios--the Commodore will _not_ go to Nagasaki, and
the roar of his guns will drown the clattering fall of your Dragon
Doors if you do not open them in time. East and West, and trade
shaded by heroism. Hokusai is dead, but his pupils are lampooning
your carpet soldiers. Spare the dynasty--parley, procrastinate.
Appoint two Princes to receive the Commodore, at once, since he will
not wait over long. At Kurihama, for he must not come to Yedo.
Flip--flap--flutter--flags in front of the Conference House. Built
over night, it seems, with unpainted peaked summits of roofs gleaming
like ricks of grain. Flip--flutter--flap--variously-tinted flags, in
a crescent about nine tall standards whose long scarlet pennons brush
the ground. Beat--tap--fill and relapse--the wind pushing against
taut white cloth screens, bellying out the Shōgun's crest of
heart-shaped Asarum leaves in the panels, crumpling them to
indefinite figures of scarlet spotting white.
Flip--ripple--brighten--over serried ranks of soldiers on the beach.
Sword-bearers, spear-bearers, archers, lancers, and those who carry
heavy, antiquated matchlocks. The block of them five thousand armed
men, drawn up in front of a cracking golden door. But behind their
bristling spears, the cracks are hidden.
Braying, blasting blares from two brass bands, approaching in
glittering boats over glittering water. One is playing the
"Overture" from "William Tell," the other, "The Last Rose of Summer,"
and the way the notes clash, and shock, and shatter, and dissolve, is
wonderful to hear. Queer barbarian music, and the monkey-soldiers
stand stock still, listening to its reverberation humming in the
folded doors of the Great Gate.