Sept haï-kaïs "La petite tortue ...", is only seventeen measures long—the number of syllables in a Japanese haiku. Alexis Roland-Manuel remarked on this "mélodie": "Do not let your modesty make you forget a certain fable by La Fontaine. You hurry slowly, perhaps, but none of your steps are wasted. How many hares envy you!" The harmony is pricked with fine, expressive dissonances. For the third "mélodie", "Le coq ...", the instruments "peck" the melody with appoggiaturas in a spirit similar to that in Ravel's "Histoires naturelles" (1906). According to Andrieu, "Maurice Delage's composition is simple and refined; the composer stays ever attentive
Haiku Mexican poet José Juan Tablada is credited with popularising haiku in his country, reinforced by the publication of two collections composed entirely in that form: "Un dia" (1919), and "El jarro de flores" (1922). In the introduction to the latter, Tablada noted that two young Mexicans, Rafael Lozano and Carlos Gutiérrez Cruz, had also begun writing them. They were followed soon after by Carlos Pellicer, Xavier Villaurrutia, and by Jaime Torres Bodet in his collection "Biombo" (1925). Much later, Octavio Paz included many haiku in "Piedras Sueltas" (1955). Elsewhere the Ecuadorian poet and diplomat Jorge Carrera Andrade included haiku among