青柳の糸に玉貫く白露の
知らず幾世の春か経ぬらん
知らず幾世の春か経ぬらん
- Roma-ji
-
Aoyagi no ito ni tama nuku shiratsuyu no shirazu ikuyo no haru ka henuramu
- English Translation
-
On the willow's threads
the white dew is strung like beads
and I do not know
how many ages of spring
have gone by since it began
- Meaning
- White dew hangs on the willow's threads like beads strung on a string; and I do not know how many springs have passed unnoticed.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 75
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, a spring poem for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The seventh poem in the run on willow. Dew on the branches is seen as beads, and from that word the poem turns to the passing of time. The original gives no fresh headnote, marking it as from the same contest.
This is Ariie's second appearance in the book, after the fifty-third poem. He was one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu.
The time is spring; the place is where willows grow.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first two lines see dew lying in a row along the thin branches as beads threaded on a string. The thread of the sixty-eighth poem returns, and the verb for stringing belongs with it.
Everything through the third line works as a preface, leading by sound alone into the verb below. The dew carries no sense forward; it bridges to the next word by likeness of sound.
The fourth line means: without my knowing, how many ages. An interrogative particle governs the auxiliary at the close.
A perfect auxiliary and one of present conjecture end the poem: they must have gone by.
The movement is a sudden leap from something as small as a drop of dew to years beyond counting. The run on willow has dealt in colour and shape until now; here the subject of time enters and the key changes.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Ariie
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The wind of the spring blows the haze apart, and through the gaps that open they trail out in disorder the green willow's hanging threads
- Through the white clouds' gaps the green willows trail and sway and over the slopes of Katsuragi mountain the wind of the spring blows on
- Pale here, deeper there in the green of the young grass out across the moor even their tracks can be seen the patches of melting snow
- In the rough rice field on last year's abandoned ground the old mugwort stands and now, since the spring has come it has put out shoots again