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Show SONNETS 07 THE JAPANESE. Japan's feeling for beauty sets the wild cherry blossom above tbe richly scented crimson rose, and finds in the white bloom of the plum, slight, frail, with only the faintest perfame, a symbol of moral purity puri-ty and aUractlveneas. The same delicate, hardly worldly appreciation for fine, re-1 mote touches of vernal loveliness has created cre-ated a school of verse in Japan, the like, ot which It would be bard to And. throughout the writings of the world. In all time. ' ' This dainty, delicate school of versa has endured a thousand years now, and has from the beginning made of Itself a form of dainty charm as the finest Satsuraa porcelain, or those wonderful transparent sketches which, with three strokes of a soft brush, show the beautiful outline of Fujiyama. The most popular of these verse-forms contains dnly five lines of five or seven syllables thifty-one syllables In all, and does. Indeed, bear to our more ponderous Western sonnets somewhat the proportion of the cherry blossom to the rose. It has no rhyme, but possesses exceeding musical j charm from the delicacy of Its vowel combinations, com-binations, Japanese coming close to Italian Ital-ian in the quality of verbal melody. Harper's Har-per's Weekly. |