_Long was the night._
_The bell called from dreams in vain,_
_For it did not toll our realized hopes._
Towards the moon-hidden days [last days] of the Rice-Sprout month
I went for a certain reason to a temple at Higashiyama.[42] On the
way the nursery beds for rice-plants were filled with water, and the
fields were green all over with the young growing rice. It was a
smile-presenting sight. It gave a feeling of loneliness to see the
dark shadow of the mountain close before me. In the lovely evenings
water-rails chattered in the fields.
_The water-rails cackle as if they were knocking at the gate,_
_But who would be deceived into opening the door, saying,_
_Our friend has come along the mountain path in the dark night?_
As the place was near the Reizan Temple I went there to worship.
Arriving so far I was fatigued, and drank from a stone-lined well
beside the mountain temple, scooping the water into the hollow of my
hand. My friend said, "I could never have enough of this water." "Is
it the first time," I asked, "that you have tasted the satisfying
sweetness of a mountain well drunk from the hollow of your hand?" She
said, "It is sweeter than to drink from a shallow spring, which becomes
muddy even from the drops which fall from the hand which has scooped it
up."[43] We came home from the temple in the full brightness of evening
sunshine, and had a clear view of Kioto below us.
My friend, who had said that a spring becomes muddy even with drops
falling into it, had to go back to the Capital.