{"collection":"shi","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/shi/npj/npj40.htm","path":"shi/npj/npj40.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/shi/npj/npj40.htm","text":"By SEAMI\nTHE play is written round a story and a poem. A man came to the capital and was the lover of a woman there. Suddenly he vanished and she, in great distress, set out to look for him in the country he came from. She found his house, and asked his servants where he was. They told her he had just married and was with his wife. When she heard this she ran out of the house and leapt into the H\u014dj\u014d River.\nGHOST OF THE LOVER.\nWhen this was told him,\n Startled, perturbed, he went to the place;\n But when he looked,\n Pitiful she lay,\n Limp-limbed on the ground.\n Then weeping, weeping--\nGHOST OF GIRL\nHe took up the body in his arms,\n And at the foot of this mountain\n Laid it to rest in earth.\nGHOST OF LOVER.\nAnd from that earth sprang up\n A lady-flower\u00a01 and blossomed\n Alone upon her grave.\n Then he:\n \"This flower is her soul.\"\n And still he lingered, tenderly\n Touched with his hand the petals' hem,\n Till in the flower's dress and on his own\n The same dew fell.\n But the flower, he thought, p. 225\n Was angry with him, for often when he touched it\n It drooped and turned aside.\nSuch is the story upon which the play is founded. The poem is one by Bishop Henj\u014d (816-890):\nO lady-flowers\n That preen yourselves upon the autumn hill,\n Even you that make so brave a show,\n Last but \"one while.\"\nHito toki, \"one while,\" is the refrain of the play. It was for \"one while\" that they lived together in the Capital; it is for \"one while\" that men are young, that flowers blossom, that love lasts. In the first part of the play an aged man hovering round a clump of lady-flowers begs the priest not to pluck them. In the second part this aged man turns into the soul of the lover. The soul of the girl also appears, and both are saved by the priest's prayers from that limbo (half death, half life) where all must linger who die in the coils of sh\u016bshin, \"heart-attachment.\"\n224:1 Ominabeshi (or ominameshi, ominayeshi), \"Ladies' Meal,\" but written with Chinese characters meaning \"ladies' flower,\" a kind of patrinia.","title":"The Noh Plays of Japan: Chapter VII: Summaries: Ominameshi","type":"page"}