Short Stanza on the Same Occasion
So young, so young! he cannot know the way:—
On Hades’ porter I’ll a bribe bestow,
That on his shoulders the dear infant may
Be safely carried to the realms below.
Attributed to Okura.
Footnotes
144 Died A.D. 671.
145 Viz., with the departed and deified Mikado.
146 The Milky Way.
147 The part played by the mirror in the devotions of the Japanese is carried back by them to a tale in their mythology which relates the disappearance into a cavern of the Sun-goddess Amaterasu, and the manner in which she was enticed forth by being led to believe that her reflection in a mirror that was shown to her was another deity more lovely than herself.