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
Kenneth Yasuda His other books include "A Pepper-pod: Classic Japanese Poems Together with Original Haiku," a collection of haiku and translations in English; "Masterworks of the Noh Theater"; "A Lacquer Box", translation of waka and a translation of "Minase Sangin Hyakuin", a 100-verse renga poem led by Sōgi and titled in English as "Three Poets at Minase". Yasuda's 1957 book consists mainly of material from his doctoral dissertation from 1955, and includes both translations from Japanese and original poems of his own in English. These had previously appeared in his book "A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku" (Alfred A.