If falling blossoms
could be stayed by weeping,
then surely
I would not yield
to the warbler’s cry.
- Meaning
- If the falling blossoms could be stopped by lamenting them, then I would not be outdone by the warbler—I too would weep all the more.
- Commentary
-
Book II, Spring Poems (Part Two)
Even if one were to cry out, it would not prevent the blossoms from falling; thus, the poet suggests there is no use in lamenting like the warbler.
- Author
- Tonoshi no Yasuko
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Each time the warbler sang in the fields, I went to see; upon the fading blossoms, the wind was blowing still.
- Blame, with your cry, the wind that blows— O warbler; for have I so much as laid a hand upon the blossoms?
- Is it for the grief of blossoms falling away that it sounds so? In spring haze on Tatsuta Mountain, the warbler’s voice is heard.
- As it flits from branch to branch, by its own wing-wind blossoms fall away; whom does it blame, I wonder, that it cries out so?