their happy thoughts than to fit links into a poetic chain. This may be illustrated by the beginning of another series:
| tsutsumi kanete | The wintry shower |
| tsuki toriotosu | Unable to hide the moon |
| shigure ka na | Lets it slip from its grasp. |
| Tokoku. | |
| kōri fumiyuku | As I step over the ice |
| mizu no inazuma | Lightning flashes in the water. |
| Jūgo. | |
| shida no ha wo | The early huntsmen |
| hatsu karibito no | Tie fronds of the white fern |
| ya ni oite | To their arrows. |
| Yasui. | |
| kita no mikado wo | Pushing open the northern |
| oshiake no haru | Palace gates—the spring! |
| Bashō. | |
| bafun kaku | Above the rakes |
| ōgi ni kaze no | For sweeping horse-dung, the air |
| uchikasumu | Appears hazy. |
| Kakei. |
This is unhappily a more representative example of linked-verse making than any I have given thus far since, in the nature of things, it was almost impossible to produce a really successful series. Here, some of the links have great individual merit, but the connections between them are poor. Thus, the image of the lightning flashes, a characterization of the familiar jagged white patterns left around footprints in the ice, is made the more brilliant by the overtones of the sharp sound of the cracking ice, and the apprehension aroused in the walker, like that on hearing thunder. But the verse has unfortunately nothing to do with
