to us, during conversations upon the
theme of cosmic consciousness.

YONE NOGUCHI

Any one who has ever had the good fortune to read a little book of verse
entitled "From the Eastern Seas," by Yone Noguchi, a young Japanese, will
at once pronounce them a beautiful and perhaps perfect example of verse
that may be correctly labeled "cosmic."

Noguchi was under nineteen years of age when he penned these verses, but
they are thoughts and expressions possible only to one who lives the
greater part of his life within the illumination of the cosmic sense. They
are so delicate as to have little, if any, of the mortal in them.

It is also significant that Noguchi in these later years (he is now only a
little past thirty), does not reproduce this cosmic atmosphere in his
writings to such an extent, due no doubt to the fact that his daily
occupation (that of Professor of Languages in the Imperial College of
Tokio), compels his outer attention, excluding the fullness of the inner
vision.

The following lines, are perfect as an exposition of spiritual
consciousness in which the lesser self has become submerged:

"Underneath the shade of the trees, myself passed into somewhere as a
cloud.
I see my soul floating upon the face of the deep, nay the faceless face
of the deepless deep--
Ah, the seas of loneliness.
The silence-waving waters, ever shoreless, bottomless, colorless, have no
shadow of my passing soul.
I, without wisdom, without foolishness, without goodness, without
badness--am like God, a negative god at least."

The almost perpetual state of spiritual consciousness in which the young
poet lived at this time is apparent in the following lines:

"When I am lost in the deep body of the mist on a hill,
The universe seems built with me as its pillar.
Am I the god upon the face of the deep, nay--
The deepless deepness in the beginning?"

And the following, possible of comprehension only to one who has glimpsed
the eternal verity of man's spiritual reality, and the shadow-like quality
of the external; could have been written only by one freed from the bonds
of illusion:

"The mystic silence of the moon,
Gradually revived in me immortality;
The sorrow that gently stirred
Was melancholy-sweet; sorrow is higher
Far than joy, the sweetest sorrow is supreme
Amid all the passions. I had
No sorrow of mortal heart: my sorrow
Was one given before the human sorrows