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
Asian literature Asian literature Asian literature is the literature produced in Asia. In Tang and Song dynasty China, famous poets such as Li Bai authored works of great importance. They wrote "shī" (Classical Chinese: 詩) poems, which have lines with equal numbers of characters, as well as "cí" (詞) poems with mixed line varieties. Early-Modern Japanese literature (17th–19th centuries) developed comparable innovations such as haiku, a form of Japanese poetry that evolved from the ancient "hokku" (Japanese language: 発句) mode. Haiku consists of three lines: the first and third lines each have five "morae" (the rough phonological equivalent of syllables), while the