尋ねつる花も我が身も衰へて
後の春ともえこそ契らね
後の春ともえこそ契らね
- Roma-ji
-
Tazunetsuru hana mo wagami mo otoroete nochi no haru to mo e koso chigirane
- English Translation
-
The flowers I sought
and I myself have grown weak
and I cannot swear
that we shall meet each other
in any spring after this
- Meaning
- The flowers I came to see, and I myself, have both grown weak; I cannot promise to meet them in another spring.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 153
Headnote: when he went to see the cherries at Urin-in and found them almost all fallen, with only a little left on one branch.
The poem records a visit to see the flowers that found them nearly gone. Urin-in was a temple at Murasakino in the capital, known for its cherries.
The Monk Ryozen was a mid-Heian monk and poet.
The time is when the cherries have almost finished falling; the place is Urin-in.
The occasion was the visit.
The first line, with a perfect auxiliary in the attributive form, means that he came looking for them. The same verb occurs in Saigyo's eighty-sixth poem in Book One and Masatsune's ninety-fourth, so that going out in search of blossom is a repeated act in these poems.
The second line sets flowers and self side by side: the few blossoms left on one branch and an aged body are put in the same condition.
The third line names that condition.
The fourth line means: in some spring hereafter.
In the closing line an adverb of impossibility, an emphatic particle and a negative in the concessive form work together; Tsurayuki's hundred and eighth poem uses the same construction. Not to be able even to promise a meeting next spring means not knowing whether one will live, and the flowers' decline is laid over the poet's own age. It is the subject of Shune's hundred and forty-second poem, which counted the springs remaining.
- Author
- The Monk Ryozen
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The people of Tang set their boats afloat, they say and made merry, so today, my friend, wear flowers woven into a garland
- Should I see the shoals where the blossom is carried the crescent has split and gone down out of the sky beyond the far mountainside
- The bird that sets out still counts upon the old nest and I, who have grown used to the flowers, am left with the evening after them
- They have fallen, then and whose is the bitterness that it should come now to call at the flowers' traces this spring wind off the mountain