初瀬山移ろふ花に春暮れて
まがひし雲ぞ峰に残れる
まがひし雲ぞ峰に残れる
- Roma-ji
-
Hatsuseyama utsurou hana ni haru kurete magaishi kumo zo mine ni nokoreru
- English Translation
-
On Hatsuse hill
the spring has darkened away
with the fading bloom
and the cloud they were mixed with
is lingering on the summit
- Meaning
- On Hatsuse the spring has gone out with the fading of the flowers, and the cloud they could not be told from is left on the ridge.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 157
Headnote: from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
Like the previous poem, this one has only cloud left when the flowers have gone. The headnote refers to the Shoji sequences of 1200.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune; this is his third appearance in this book, after the hundred and thirty-sixth and hundred and forty-seventh poems.
The time is the end of spring; the place is Mount Hatsuse in Yamato Province, the mountain of Hase-dera, known for its cherries.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.
The first line raises the place. Against the Yoshino that has recurred through this book, another famous site is set here.
The verb in the second line means to lose colour, the word used in the hundred and thirty-seventh and hundred and thirty-eighth poems; the particle means along with the flowers and governs the verb below.
The third line has the spring ending in step with the fading of the colour, so that the end of the flowers and the end of the season are given as one movement.
The verb in the fourth line means to be mixed in and become indistinguishable, used in the hundred and seventh and hundred and thirty-second poems. Cloud that could not be told from blossom is now plainly cloud, because there is no blossom.
The poem ends on the same verb as the one before. The confusion is resolved, and its resolution is precisely what shows the flowers to be gone: the comparison of cloud and blossom, running through this book, is undone here.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- Deep into the spring I went seeking, and at last on the ridge's edge the colour of that faint cloud I glimpsed is lingering still
- By Yoshino's stream the kerria on the bank has come into flower and the cherry on the peak must have fallen, every one
- I halt my horse here to water it once again where the kerria lets its dew fall on the stream the Tamagawa at Ide