hill;' & when at last the prayer of the priest unites them in marriage
the bride says that he has made 'a dream-bridge over wild grass, over the
grass I dwell in;' and in the end bride and bridegroom show themselves
for a moment 'from under the shadow of the love-grass.'

In 'Hagoromo' the feather-mantle of the fairy woman creates also its
rhythm of metaphor. In the beautiful day of opening spring 'the plumage
of Heaven drops neither feather nor flame,' 'nor is the rock of earth
over-much worn by the brushing of the feathery skirt of the stars.' One
half remembers a thousand Japanese paintings, or whichever comes first
into the memory. That screen painted by Korin, let us say, shown lately
at the British Museum, where the same form is echoing in wave and in
cloud and in rock. In European poetry I remember Shelley's continually
repeated fountain and cave, his broad stream and solitary star. In
neglecting character which seems to us essential in drama, as do their
artists in neglecting relief and depth, when they arrange flowers in a
vase in a thin row, they have made possible a hundred lovely intricacies.


VII

These plays arose in an age of continual war and became a part of the
education of soldiers. These soldiers, whose natures had as much of
Walter Pater as of Achilles combined with Buddhist priests and women
to elaborate life in a ceremony, the playing of football, the drinking of
tea, and all great events of state, becoming a ritual. In the painting
that decorated their walls and in the poetry they recited one discovers
the only sign of a great age that cannot deceive us, the most vivid and
subtle discrimination of sense and the invention of images more powerful
than sense; the continual presence of reality. It is still true that the