春はただ昨日ばかりをうぐひすの
かぎれるごとも鳴かぬ今日かな
かぎれるごとも鳴かぬ今日かな
- Roma-ji
-
Haru wa tada kinō bakari o uguisu no kagireru goto mo nakanu kyō kana
- English Translation
-
As though it had set
itself a limit — spring runs
only to yesterday —
the warbler does not sing at
all on this day, this first day
- Meaning
- As though it had set itself a limit — spring runs only to yesterday — the warbler does not sing at all today.
- Commentary
-
131 The Day It Does Not Sing
In the reign of the late Emperor Daigo, on the first day of the fourth month, the emperor commanded that a poem be made on why the warbler does not sing, and Minamoto no Kintada composed this. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Minamoto no Kintada served as Governor of Ōmi; in the fourth section he conveys news of a promotion in a poem, and in the hundred and first he is present at the death of Fujiwara no Suenawa. He is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals and appears in the hundred and thirty-third section. Emperor Daigo, called the late emperor here, appears in the hundred and thirty-second through hundred and thirty-fourth sections.
The setting is the palace, on the first day of the fourth month of the old calendar — the first day of summer.
What prompted the poem was the emperor's command to compose on the warbler's silence — an improvisation to a set topic.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded. It was included in Kintada's own collection.
The opening says that spring runs only to yesterday. The first day of the fourth month began summer by the calendar, and everything before it was spring.
The second line names the bird that is not singing; the warbler had long been the bird of spring in poetry.
The third line means as though it had fixed a term for itself. The bird seems to know the calendar and to have stopped on the day spring ended.
The closing exclaims at its silence today. Asked why the bird does not sing, he answers that it is keeping to the calendar. Rather than explain, he credits the bird with human discretion.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- The house where I wait for you has grown dark indeed since within the month we agreed on — within the moon — you have not shown yourself
- Is it that the heart of the autumn wind is hard The pampas plumes turn their backs, before anything on the quarter it blows from
- That we call the bright moon a drawn bow is because it takes aim at the rim of the mountains, and then looses itself, and goes in
- That the white cloud has come down and settled here, on this side, on this shoulder must be because a wind out of heaven has blown it to me