花の色に天霧る霞立ちまよひ
空さへ匂ふ山桜かな
空さへ匂ふ山桜かな
- Roma-ji
-
Hana no iro ni amagiru kasumi tachimayoi sora sae niou yamazakura kana
- English Translation
-
With the flowers' colour
the haze that dims the whole sky
rises and wanders
till even the sky is bright
with the mountain cherry bloom
- Meaning
- The haze that dims the whole sky rises and drifts with the colour of the flowers, until the sky itself glows with the mountain cherries.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 103
Headnote: when the company were writing poems on blossom at the residence of Princess Yushi.
The second poem on cherries seen at a distance. Where the previous poem asked how to tell cloud from blossom, this one lets haze and the colour of the flowers run together until the sky takes their colour. The headnote places it at a gathering at Princess Yushi's residence; she was a daughter of Emperor Go-Suzaku and appears in the headnote to the fifty-sixth poem of Book One.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Nagaie (1005-1064), a son of Fujiwara no Michinaga and founder of the Mikohidari house, from which Shunzei and Teika descend.
The time is the height of the cherry season; the place is within sight of mountain cherries.
The occasion was the composition of poems on blossom.
The particle in the first line marks cause: by reason of the flowers' colour.
The verb in the second line means for the whole sky to cloud over, and the haze is taken on the largest scale.
The third line means to gather and drift confusedly, so that the boundary between haze and colour is lost.
The particle in the fourth line marks addition: not only the ground but the sky as well. The verb means to shine with rich colour, the same visual use as in the forty-first and ninety-eighth poems of Book One.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle. Colour rising from the ground through the haze to the sky is the conception of Teika's fortieth poem in Book One, where the scent of plum hazed the sky; there the sense was smell, and here it is sight.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Nagaie
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Counting up the years that have gone by, come to nothing I find they were springs and in every one of them the flowers gave me sorrow
- On the mountainside where the white clouds lie trailing the mountain cherries and which would I go and break could I tell which was the flower
- In the palace halls the courtiers must have leisure for with cherry sprays set in their hair, once again they have spent the day away
- I have always known the grief of never having my fill of blossom but nothing has been like this like this evening of today