Poems About Japan

Table of Contents

1. Amakagu

   by Anonymous

   Piercing the lofty sky,
   Yonder Amakagu soars;
   From whose brow the mists are lifting,
   In the fulness of the spring;
   Rustling mid the pines the wind
   Ruffles yonder pool’s smooth bosom,
   And of every grove and thicket
   Are the dark-massed shadows flecked
   By the mountain-cherry’s bloom;
   While along the strand are heard
   Shrilly cries of circling gulls,
   Mingling with the whirring din
   Of a flight of early wild-duck;
   And there cometh o’er the waters,
   In a rudderless frail bark,
   Onwards drifting oarless urged,
   In uncheered solitude,
   Our Emperor’s mighty heir.
   

2. Japan, excerpt from "Kéramos"

   by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

   
   

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   Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas,
   The islands of the Japanese
   Beneath me lie; o’er lake and plain
   The stork, the heron, and the crane
   Through the clear realms of azure drift,
   And on the hillside I can see
   The villages of Imari,
   Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift
   Their twisted columns of smoke on high,
   Cloud-cloisters that in ruins lie,
   With sunshine streaming through each rift,
   And broken arches of blue sky.
   

   All the bright flowers that fill the land,
   Ripple of waves on rock or sand,
   The snow on Fujyama’s cone,
   The midnight heaven so thickly sown
   With constellations of bright stars,
   The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make
   A whisper by each stream and lake,
   The saffron dawn, the sunset red,
   Are painted on these lovely jars;
   Again the skylark sings, again
   The stork, the heron, and the crane
   Float through the azure overhead,
   The counterfeit and counterpart
   Of Nature reproduced in Art.
   

3. Japan, excerpt from "The Lusiad"

   by Luís de Camões, translated by W. J. Mickle

   
   

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   These shores forsake, to future ages due:
   A world of islands claims thy happier view,
   Where lavish Nature all her bounty pours,
   And flowers and fruits of every fragrance showers.
   Japan behold; beneath the globe’s broad face
   Northward she sinks, the nether seas embrace
   Her eastern bounds; what glorious fruitage there,
   Illustrious Gama, shall thy labors bear!
   How bright a silver mine! when heaven’s own lore
   From Pagan dross shall purify her ore.
   

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