浜千鳥飛びゆくかぎりありければ
雲たつ山をあはとこそ見れ
雲たつ山をあはとこそ見れ
- Roma-ji
-
Hamachidori tobiyuku kagiri arikereba kumo tatsu yama o awa to koso mire
- English Translation
-
A plover of the
shore can fly only so far
and no further — so
I look at that cloud-crowned mountain
from here, and say: ah, there it is
- Meaning
- A shore plover can fly only so far and no further; so I look at that cloud-crowned mountain from here and say only: ah, there it is.
- Commentary
-
145 The Plover of the Shore
When the retired Emperor Uda, then in holy orders, was staying at Kawajiri, there was a woman of pleasure called Shiro. She was sent for and came and waited on him; and since there were many nobles and princes present she kept to the lower seats, far off. Asked why she stayed so far away, and told to answer in a poem, she composed "Hamachidori tobiyuku kagiri arikereba kumo tatsu yama o awa to koso mire", and the retired emperor praised it and gave her a reward. The poem "Inochi dani kokoro ni kanau mono naraba nanika wakare no kanashikaramashi" is also hers. That is the whole of the section.
The retired Emperor Uda appears in the first and second sections as the Teiji Emperor. Kawajiri lay near the mouth of the Yodo river and was known as a place where women of pleasure gathered. Shiro was one of them.
The setting is Kawajiri, where the retired emperor was staying with a great many nobles and princes about him.
What prompted the poem was his asking why she kept so far off, and telling her to answer in verse — an improvisation to a set question.
He praised it and rewarded her. The section then gives another poem of hers.
The plover of the shore is a low-flying bird, and it is herself.
That it can fly only so far means that a woman of her station may come only so near.
The cloud-crowned mountain is the retired emperor with his nobles about him.
The last line carries both an exclamation and the sound of the place name Awaji, with an emphatic particle governing the verb: she can only look from a distance. Asked why she stays away, she answers with a bird and a mountain, high and low — and states the distance of rank without naming it.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- I could not say that one season is worse than the rest — and yet autumn nights are when the bleakness of my own case comes home to me
- A road for going and coming back, I thought it — no more than that, a borrowed road. And it turns out this was my last setting out
- If only our lives were ours to command — if life at least obeyed us then why should any parting be a sorrowful thing at all
- Pale green, and worth the meeting — this spring I have met and though I am not the haze itself, I too have risen, and stand here at last