Undoubtedly the maiden meant no harm, but she caused a great deal of pain, for at a later day, becoming a great lady of society, she forgot all about this old friendship, or perhaps wondered why she ever wasted her time in talking to such a strange old-fashioned professor.

Then the affectionate heart is condemned to silence again, to silence and oblivion, like the harp thrown away in some garret to be covered with cobwebs and visited only by bats.

"Is it not time," the old man thinks, "that the strings should be broken, the strings of the heart?
Let the cold wind of death now come and snap them." Yet, after all, why should he complain?
Did he not have the beautiful experience of loving, and was she not in that time at least well worthy of the love that she called forth like music?
There are several other poems referring to what would seem to be the same experience, and all are beautiful, but one seems to me nobler than the rest, expressing as it does a generous resignation.

It is called "Deteriora," a Latin word signifying lesser, inferior, or deteriorated things--not easy to translate.

Nor would you find the poem easy to understand, referring as it does to conditions of society foreign to anything in Japanese experience.