.... in
the fierce heat of the midday sun, I stumble unexpectedly on a bed of Lotus,
and I gaze for the first time on the lovely flowers, which, growing in the
black mud, are to the Japanese the symbols of purity – ‘A pure and beautiful
woman in a haunt of vice’; ‘A man of stainless honour in a wicked world.’ Such exquisite tender colours, such
perfection of form, such stately grace of growth – set round with mighty and
shapely leaves with their undercolouring of pale blue, which seems in the
sunlight to reflect the heavens – has the Lotus, that it is no wonder religion
has set it on the highest pinnacle of its symbolism. The beautiful penciling of the veins on the
petals seems to have been the fount of inspiration for the old Buddhist
artists, whose work was never perfect until the gold lines on the flowers they
loved to paint vied with Nature in her accuracy.
In the early morning the rising sun
receives a royal salute of welcome from a hundred and one opening buds.
Francis
Piggott CJ (1852-1925)
