A Journal From Japan - A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist #232248

To Japan<br><br>Land that mused while the world was striving!<br>Land that dreamed while the nations fought!<br>Truth with thy dreamers had forgathered,<br>Peace, in thine isles enclosed, had taught<br>Her secret laws of Beauty to thy sons.<br>Then men spent hours beneath the cherry trees,<br>Or watched the pointed Iris pierce the ground.<br>They cultivated Wisdom on their knees<br>And regulated life in ways profound.<br>Then thy fair daughters ministered to men,<br>Subduing and subdued their graceful form.<br>Dreamland of Beauty, girt by glowing seas!<br>Thou didst appear unfitted for the storm<br>That broke upon thee from the lowering West.<br><br>Yet thou hast risen and conquered.<br>Thou dost stand, armed as a modern People<br>In the front rank - and yet I say, alas!<br>Who could have wished, in waking thou shouldst spurn<br>The wondrous rightness of thy sheltered past?<br>To be as others are thou seem'st to yearn,<br>And for mere useful ugliness dost cast<br>For ever from thee beauties unsurpassed.<br>True, thou hast beaten them on their own ground,<br>The Goths and Vandals whom as foes were found,<br>Yet I would rather see thee still apart<br>Than soiling thy traditions in the mart.<br>Wouldst thou not weep if thy sweet cherry tree<br>Dropped its light blooms to bear the hard rice grains?<br>O cherry flower of lands! I weep to see<br>Thy falling blooms. The whole World's loss, thy "gains."