The host will not enter the room until all the guests have seated themselves and quiet reigns with nothing else to break the silence save the note of the boiling water in the iron kettle. The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds, of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping through a bamboo forest, or the soughing of pines on some faraway hill.
Τhe Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo (a.k.a. Tenshin), Kodansha International, Tokyo and New York 1989, p. 83 [first ed. 1906]
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