Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/303

Chorus: “Strike!” he cries;
“The quick beat, the battle-charge!
Loud, loud! Strike, strike,” he rails,
And brandishing his demon stick
Gives her no rest.
“Oh woe!” the lady weeps,
“No sound, no sound. Oh misery!” she wails.
And he, at the mallet stroke, “Repent, repent!”
Such torments in the world of night
Abōrasetsu, chief of demons, wields,
Who on the Wheel of Fire
Sears sinful flesh and shatters bones to dust.
Not less her torture now!
“Oh, agony!” she cries, “What have I done,
By what dire seed this harvest sown?”
Ghost: Clear stands the cause before you.
Chorus: Clear stands the cause before my eyes;
Chorus: Clear stands the cause before my eyes; I know it now.
By the pool’s white waters, upon the laurel’s bough
The drum was hung.
He did not know his hour, but struck and struck
Till all the will had ebbed from his heart’s core;
Then leapt into the lake and died.
And while his body rocked
Like driftwood on the waves,
His soul, an angry ghost,
Possessed the lady’s wits, haunted her heart with woe.
The mallet lashed, as these waves lash the shore,
Lash on the ice of the eastern shore.
The wind passes; the rain falls
On the Red Lotus, the Lesser and the Greater.^[1]
The hair stands up on my head.
“The fish that leaps the falls