A LIVING GOD

lichens upon their flanks and upon their shoulders, in speckles of dead-silver, in patches of dead-gold;—I would watch, through years of generations, the gradual sideward sinking of their pedestals undermined by frost and rain, until at last my lions would lose their balance, and fall, and break their mossy heads off. After which the people would give me new lions of another form—lions of granite or of bronze, with gilded teeth and gilded eyes, and tails like a torment of fire.

Between the trunks of the cedars and pines, between the jointed columns of the bamboos, I would observe, season after season, the changes of the colors of the valley: the falling of the snow of winter and the falling of the snow of cherry blossoms; the lilac spread of the miyakobana; the blazing yellow of the natané; the sky-blue mirrored in flooded levels—levels dotted with the moon-shaped hats of the toiling people who would love me; and at last the pure and tender green of the growing rice.

The muku-birds and the uguisu would fill the shadows of my grove with ripplings and