In the following dodoitsu will be found mostly thoughts or emotions according with universal experience:--

Gathering clouds to the moon;--storm and rain to the flowers:
Somehow this world of woe never is just as we like.[1]

Almost as soon as they bloom, the scented flowers of the plum-tree
By the wind of this world of change are scattered and blown away.

Thinking to-morrow remains, thou heart's frail flower-of-cherry?
How knowest whether this night the tempest will not come?[2]

[1.

Tsuki ni murakumo,
Hana ni wa arashi:
Tokaku uki-yo wa
Mama naranu.

This song especially refers to unhappy love, and contains the substance of two Buddhist proverbs: Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kaze (cloud-masses to the moon; wind to flowers); and Mama ni naranu wa uki-yo no narai (to be disappointed is the rule in this miserable world). "Uki-yo" (this fleeting or unhappy world) is one of the commonest Buddhist terms in use.

2.

Asu ari to
Omo kokoro no
Ada-zakura:
Yo wa ni arashi no
Fukanu monokawa?

Lit.: "To-morrow-is that think heart-of perishable-cherry flower: this-night-in-storm blow-not, is-it-certain?"]

Shadow and shape alike melt and flow back to nothing:
He who knows this truth is the Daruma of snow.[1]

As the moon of the fifteenth night, the heart till the age fifteen:
Then the brightness wanes, and the darkness comes with love.[2]

All things change, we are told, in this world of change and sorrow;
But love's way never changes of promising never to change.[3]

[1.

Kage mo katachi mo
Kiyureba moto no
Midzu to satoru zo
Yuki-Daruma.

Lit.: "Shadow and shape also, if-melt-away, original-water is,-that-understands Snow-Daruma." Daruma (Dharma), the twenty-eighth patriarch of the Zen sect, is said to have lost his legs through remaining long in the posture of meditation; and many legless toy-figures, which are so balanced that they will always assume an upright position however often placed upside-down, are called by his name. The snow-men made by Japanese children have the same traditional form.--The Japanese friend who helped me to translate these verses, tells me that a ghostly meaning attaches to the word "Kage" [shadow] in the above;--this would give a much more profound signification to the whole verse.

2 According to the old calendar, there was always a full moon on the fifteenth of the month. The Buddhist allusion in the verse is to mayoi, the illusion of passion, which is compared to a darkness concealing the Right Way.

3.

Kawaru uki-yo ni
Kawaranu mono wa
Kawarumai to no
Koi no michi.

Lit.: "Change changeable-world-in, does-not-change that-which, 'We-will-never-change'-saying of Love-of Way."]