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THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN

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THE FLOWER OF OLD
JAPAN

AND OTHER POEMS

BY
ALFRED NOYES


New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1907

All rights reserved
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Copyright, 1907,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1907.


Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
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‘O ciel! toute la Chine est par terre en morceaux!
Ce vase pâle et doux comme un reflet des eaux,
Couvert d’oiseaux, de fleurs, de fruits, et des mensonges
De ce vague idéal qui sort du bleu des songes,
Ce vase unique, étrange, impossible, engourdi,
Gardant sur lui le clair de lune en plein midi,
Qui paraissait vivant, où luisait une flamme,
Qui semblait presque un monstre et semblait presque une âme.’
—Victor Hugo (Le Pot Cassé).
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To= CAROL= A Little Maiden= of Miyako

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PREFACE

It is a perilous adventure—the writing of a preface, however brief, toone’s own poems. For one may be tempted to re-state matters that couldfind their full elucidation only in the verses themselves. Tennyson onceremarked that poetry is like shot silk, glancing with many colours; andany attempt to define its meanings is as great a mistake as the attemptof nineteenth-century materialism to enclose the infinite universe inits logical nut-shells. Through poetry alone, whether of deeds or words,thought or colour, passion or marble, is it possible to approach theInfinite, or as Blake did:—

‘To see a world in a grain of sand,
A heaven in a wild flower;
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.’

But this revelation is the sole end and object of all true art; and Ihope it may not be{x} thought presumptuous to say here simplythat—whether the

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