THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN

Ourselves The Tall Thin Man The Dwarf Behind the Twisted Pear-tree Creeping Sin The Mad Moonshee The Nameless One

You that have known the wonder zone Of islands far away; You that have heard the dinky bird And roamed in rich Cathay; You that have sailed o'er unknown seas To woods of Amfalula trees Where craggy dragons play: Oh, girl or woman, boy or man, You've plucked the Flower of Old Japan! Do you remember the blue stream; The bridge of pale bamboo; The path that seemed a twisted dream Where everything came true; The purple cherry-trees; the house With jutting eaves below the boughs; The mandarins in blue, With tiny, tapping, tilted toes, And curious curved mustachios? The road to Old Japan! you cry, And is it far or near? Some never find it till they die; Some find it everywhere; The road where restful Time forgets His weary thoughts and wild regrets And calls the golden year Back in a fairy dream to smile On young and old a little while. Some seek it with a blazing sword, And some with old blue plates; Some with a miser's golden hoard; Some with a book of dates; Some with a box of paints; a few Whose loads of truth would ne'er pass through The first, white, fairy gates; And, oh, how shocked they are to find That truths are false when left behind! Do you remember all the tales That Tusitala told, When first we plunged thro' purple vales In quest of buried gold? Do you remember how he said That if we fell and hurt our head Our hearts must still be bold, And we must never mind the pain But rise up and go on again? Do you remember? Yes; I know You must remember still: He left us, not so long ago, Carolling with a will, Because he knew that he should lie Under the comfortable sky Upon a lonely hill, In Old Japan, when day was done; "Dear Robert Louis Stevenson." And there he knew that he should find The hills that haunt us now; The whaups that cried upon the wind His heart remembered how; And friends he loved and left, to roam Far from the pleasant hearth of home, Should touch his dreaming brow; Where fishes fly and birds have fins, And children teach the mandarins. Ah, let us follow, follow far Beyond the purple seas; Beyond the rosy foaming bar, The coral reef, the trees, The land of parrots, and the wild That rolls before the fearless child Its ancient mysteries: Onward and onward, if we can, To Old Japan—to Old Japan.