ささがにのいとかかりける身のほどを
思へば夢の心地こそすれ
思へば夢の心地こそすれ
- Roma-ji
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Sasagani no ito kakarikeru mi no hodo o omoeba yume no kokochi koso sure
- English Translation
-
Like a spider's thread
hanging there, so frail a thing,
this lot of mine—
when I think of it, it feels
as though it were but a dream.
- Meaning
- When I think of my lot, as frail as a hanging spider's thread, it feels as though it were all a dream.
- Commentary
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Book Eighteen Miscellaneous Poems III 1816
Headnote: "When composing a hundred poems of personal grievance."
This is the first of the poems on the self through the spider. When he thinks of his lot, as frail as a hanging spider's thread, it feels like a dream. He lays his own obscure fortunes over the frailty of the spider's thread. According to the headnote, it comes from a hundred-poem sequence of personal grievance.
The author, "Toshiyori Ason," is Minamoto no Toshiyori. A son of Minamoto no Tsunenobu, he compiled the Kin'yō Wakashū and wrote the poetic treatise Toshiyori Zuinō.
The first line, "sasagani no," is another name for the spider and a pillow word for "spider" and "thread." The next poem opens with the same line.
In the second line, "ito kakarikeru," "ito" is a pivot word meaning both the spider's "thread" and the adverb "so, very." "Kakari" also overlaps a thread hanging and "being thus."
The third line, "mi no hodo o," means "my lot, my station."
The fourth line, "omoeba yume no," means "when I think, like a dream."
The last line, "kokochi koso sure," closes the kakari-musubi of "koso" with the realis "sure." He laments that his lot, frail as a spider's thread, hardly seems real.
- Author
- Minamoto no Toshiyori
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
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Mukashi dani mukashi to omoishi tarachine no nao koishiki zo hakanakarikeru
- Next Poem
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Sasagani no sora ni sugaku mo onaji koto mataki yado ni mo ikuyo ka wa hemu