Thou art, O great load, like a sea
Stretching the bosom vast for forgiveness:
Into thy bosom I peep with fear that is woman’s joy.
With thee I trust as with the sinking sun that will rise again;
Spring and Life are thy lights:
Around the lights I cling like a shadow,
With my heart of whisper and love.
How glad I am to have myself lost in thy bliss
Like a firefly flashing a little lantern
Into the golden tempest of moonbeams!
The morning sun blows away a candle of dew:
Like the dew I am content in my helplessness.
I stand against thy blinding white soul,
With sensation that only a summer insect knows:
I am a mote in thy mighty radiance.
Oh, what chance or Nature made thee so great!
My daily task is to recollect the sweetness of thy love,
And to find the glorious dawn of Life,
With fire in speech and in kisses:
Thy breath and promise make my life beauteous.
I flatter myself thinking that thou canst not live without me,
Since I am like a moon unto thy diadem of night:
Oh, tell me, is this ecstasy my real life?
Are we living in a hidden love dale
Without a mortal sky above,
But eternally dim with yearning in air,
Far away from the road of Death?
Give me thy wings of heart,
And we will fly into the song of beauty,
And stare down through the dreaming breeze
Over the flowers red and gold,
With one eye which is thine and mine.
Thy soul, O great load, is like a heavenly gate;
Beyond the gate all the loves gather:
Against the gate I place my hungry ears,
With my heart mortally ravished in desire:
The manna of another happiness softly fall
Over me, as dews drop along a morning highway.
Thy footsteps are ever stepping on to the house of God:
I follow after thy footsteps in prayer.
I am a bird fed by the shadow of thy love,
Singing the song of nightingale,
In the woodland of thy fancy
Over the valley of thy dream:
In song and in thy face my life would be eternal.
From thy face the freshest breath of leaves steals:
Thou are a pine tree upon the hill,
With the balmy song of Immortality,
Changeless in Spring and in Winter;
I am a weak vine climbing up by thee,
And earn the bliss to meet with a star.
Thou art a welcome mountain nest
Where I fly as a midnight wind
With hoary heart and revolting thought:
Thou art a river, and I am a ripple in its bosom.
O great load, let us rise towards the west
To face the departing sun,—
West where paradise lies, (as I am told),
West, saintly region of Repose!
We will lie down with our sorrowless hearts
Open under the sun-set fires,
And send our souls beyond into the space,
Into the repose and into Paradise:
And then we will turn home under the gathering night,
Oh, how rich I am with a book of poems and with thy voice!
Noguchi, Yone. The Pilgrimage. (Kamakura: The Valley Press / Yokohama: Kelly & Walsh, 1909). Ed. Kamei, Shunsuke. Collected English Works of Yone Noguchi Poems, Novels and Literary Essays. (Tokyo: Edition Synapse, 2007). pp. 36-40