days
glided by and here have I attained to look on the beginnings of peace.
Then wherefore should I go?--for all life is within the soul. Shall the
fish weary of his pool? And I, who through my blind eyes feel the moon
illuming my forest by night and the sun by day, abide in peace, so that
even the wild beasts press round to hear my music. I have come by a path
overblown by autumn leaves. But I have come."

Then said the Divine Emperor as if unconsciously;

"Would that I also might come! But the august duties cannot easily be
laid aside. And I have no wife--no son."

And Semimaru, playing very softly on the strings of his biwa made
no other answer, and His Majesty, collecting his thoughts, which had
become, as it were, frozen with the cold and the quiet and the strange
music, spoke thus, as if in a waking dream;

"Why have I not wedded? Because I have desired a bride beyond the
women of earth, and of none such as I desire has the rumor reached me.
Consider that Ancestor who wedded Her Shining Majesty! Evil and lovely
was she, and the passions were loud about her. And so it is with women.
Trouble and vexation of spirit, or instead a great weariness. But if the
Blessed One would vouchsafe to my prayers a maiden of blossom and dew,
with a heart calm as moonlight, her would I wed. O, honorable One, whose
wisdom surveys the world, is there in any place near or far--in heaven
or in earth, such a one that I may seek and find?"

And Semimaru, still making a very low music on his biwa, said this;

"Supreme Master, where the Shiobara River breaks away through the gorges
to the sea, dwelt a poor couple--the husband a wood-cutter. They had no
children to aid in their toil, and daily the woman addressed her prayers
for a son to the Bodhisattwa Kwannon, the Lady of Pity who looketh down
for ever upon the sound of prayer. Very fervently she prayed, with such
offerings as her poverty allowed, and on a certain night she dreamed
this dream. At the shrine of the Senju Kwannon she knelt as was her
custom, and that Great Lady, sitting enthroned upon the Lotos of Purity,
opened Her eyes slowly from Her divine contemplation and heard the
prayer of the wood-cutter's wife. Then stooping like a blown willow
branch, she gathered a bud from the golden lotos plant that stood upon
her altar, and breathing upon it it became pure white and living, and it
exhaled a perfume like the flowers of Paradise, This flower the Lady
of Pity flung into the