. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. e, and most of them perished. Japaneseboys keep those fierce insects and set them to fightinglike game-cocks. In the hot season the dragon-flies used to be a featurein our garden. Very often, indeed, was I able to verifythe marvellously vivid description of our greatest modempoet:— * To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. 232 Nine Years in Nipon. An inner impulse rent the veilOf his old husk : from head to tailCame out clear plates of sapphire dried his wings : like gauze they grew :Thro crofts and
. Nine years in Nipon. Sketches of Japanese life and manners. e, and most of them perished. Japaneseboys keep those fierce insects and set them to fightinglike game-cocks. In the hot season the dragon-flies used to be a featurein our garden. Very often, indeed, was I able to verifythe marvellously vivid description of our greatest modempoet:— * To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. 232 Nine Years in Nipon. An inner impulse rent the veilOf his old husk : from head to tailCame out clear plates of sapphire dried his wings : like gauze they grew :Thro crofts and pastures wet with dewA living flash of light he flew. We had several varieties of them, and our boys grew very-expert in capturing them. One Sunday early in thesummer of 1882, the wind was blowing gently from theeast, like our sweet west wind, when great armies ofcrimson-scarlet dragon-flies spread in pairs all over thecity, and continued to come for the greater part of theday. Where they came from, where they went to, orwhat their end was, I never Red-bellied Dragon-Jly. The branches of a tall Salisbiiria adiantifolia^ withleaves like those of the maiden-hair fern, overhung ourquick set hedge, and in autumn its smooth little nuts andpale golden leaves fell in showers about our path. I haveoften heard strangers go into rapturous admiration of thiskind of tree, which often grows to a great height; but I thinkit is most ungraceful in the general massing of its foliage,and cannot compare for a moment with our own birch. My Garden and its Guests. 233 elm, oak, beech, or ash. I suppose when any one seesthe leaf for the first time it appears so strange and beauti-ful that the conclusion is jumped at that the tree itselfmust be grandly shaped. Nature, however, does not al-ways build up her work in this way, and so the Salisburiahas great sprawling awkward branches, which seem not toknow quite what to do with themselves, and often giveup life in despair when there is a high w
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