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
Japanese poetry poetry: The largest anthology of haiku in Japanese is the 12-volume Bunruihaiku-zenshū (Classified Collection of Haiku) compiled by Masaoka Shiki, completed after his death, which collected haiku by seasonal theme and sub-theme. It includes work dating back to the 15th century. The largest collection of haiku translated into English on any single subject is "Cherry Blossom Epiphany" by Robin D. Gill, which contains some 3,000 Japanese haiku on the subject of the cherry blossom.< Gill, Robin D. "Cherry Blossom Epiphany", Paraverse Press, 2007 > H. Mack Horton's translation of the 16th-century "Journal of Sōchō", by a pre-eminent renga poet of