Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/299
Gardener: They talk of the moon tree, the laurel that grows in the Garden of the Moon. … But for me there is but one true tree, this laurel by the lake. Oh, may the drum that hangs on its branches give forth a mighty note, a music to bind up my bursting heart.
Listen! the evening bell to help me chimes;
But then tolls in
A heavy tale of day linked on to day,
Chorus: (speaking for the Gardener): And hope stretched out from dusk to dusk.
But now, a watchman of the hours, I beat
The longed-for stroke.
Gardener: I was old, I shunned the daylight,
I was gaunt as an aged crane;
And upon all that misery
Suddenly a sorrow was heaped,
The new sorrow of love.
The days had left their marks,
Coming and coming, like waves that beat on a sandy shore…
Chorus: Oh, with a thunder of white waves
The echo of the drum shall roll.
Gardener: The afterworld draws near me,
Yet even now I wake not
From this autumn of love that closes
In sadness the sequence of my years.
Chorus: And slow as the autumn dew
Tears gather in my eyes, to fall
Scattered like dewdrops from a shaken flower
On my coarse-woven dress.
See here the marks, imprint of tangled love,
That all the world will read.
Gardener: I ssaid “I will forget,”
Chorus: And got worse torment so
Than by remembrance. But all in this world