The fashion quaint, the timeworn flaws,
    The narrow range, the doubtful tone,
  All was excused awhile, because
    It seemed a creature of her own.

  Perfection tires; the new in old,
    The mended wrecks that need her skill,
  Amuse her.  If the truth be told,
    She loves the triumph of her will.

  With this, she dares herself persuade,
    She’ll be for many a month content,
  Quite sure no duchess ever played
    Upon a sweeter instrument.

  And thus in sooth she can beguile
    Girlhood’s romantic hours, but soon
  She yields to taste and mood and style,
    A siren of the gay saloon.

  And wonders how she once could like
    Those drooping wires, those failing notes,
  And leaves her toy for bats to strike
    Amongst the cobwebs and the motes.

  But enter in, thou freezing wind,
    And snap the harp-strings, one by one;
  It was a maiden blithe and kind: 
    They felt her touch; their task is done.

In this charming little study we know that the harp described is not a harp; it is the loving heart of an old man, at least of a man beyond the usual age of lovers.  He has described and perhaps adored some beautiful person who seemed to care for him, and who played upon his heart, with her whims, caresses, smiles, much as one would play upon the strings of a harp.  She did not mean to be cruel at all, nor even insincere.  It is even probable that she really in those times thought that she loved the man, and under the charms of the girl the man became a different being; the old-fashioned mind brightened, the old-fashioned heart exposed its hidden treasures of tenderness and wisdom and sympathy.  Very much like playing upon a long forgotten instrument, was the relation between the maiden and the man—­not only because he resembled such an instrument in the fact of belonging emotionally and intellectually to another generation, but also because his was a heart whose true music had long been silent, unheard by the world.  Undoubtedly the maiden meant no harm, but she caused a great deal of pain, for at a later day, becoming a great lady of society, she forgot all about this old friendship, or perhaps wondered why she ever wasted her time in talking to such a strange old-fashioned professor.  Then the affectionate heart is condemned to silence again, to silence and oblivion, like the harp thrown away in some garret to be covered with cobwebs and visited only by bats.  “Is it not time,” the old man thinks, “that the strings should be broken, the strings of the heart?  Let the cold wind of death now come and snap them.”  Yet, after all, why should he complain?  Did he not have the beautiful experience of loving, and was she not in that time at least well worthy of the love that she called forth like music?

There are several other poems referring to what would seem to be the same experience, and all are beautiful, but one seems to me nobler than the rest, expressing as it does a generous resignation.  It is called “Deteriora,” a Latin word signifying lesser, inferior, or deteriorated things—­not easy to translate.  Nor would you find the poem easy to understand, referring as it does to conditions of society foreign to anything in Japanese experience.  But some verses which I may quote you will like.