-- Of course those big paper butterflies (o-cho and me-cho) which figure
at weddings must not be thought of as having any ghostly signification. As
emblems they only express the joy of living union, and the hope that the
newly married couple may pass through life together as a pair of
butterflies flit lightly through some pleasant garden,-- now hovering
upward, now downward, but never widely separating.



II


A small selection of hokku (1) on butterflies will help to illustrate
Japanese interest in the aesthetic 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?--

Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit. [1]

Only fourteen syllables -- and immortality. Now with seventeen Japanese
syllables things quite as wonderful -- indeed, much more wonderful -- have
been done, not once or twice, but probably a thousand times... However,
there is nothing wonderful in the following hokku, which have been selected