春山の霧に惑へる鴬も
我れにまさりて物思はめやも
我れにまさりて物思はめやも
- Roma-ji
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Haruyama no kiri ni madoeru uguisu mo ware ni masarite mono omowame ya mo
- English Translation
-
On the hills of spring
lost and wandering in the mist,
could the warbler there
more than I, deeper than I,
be lost in thought? Surely not.
- Meaning
- Could even the bush warbler, lost and wandering in the mist of the spring hills, be more troubled in heart than I? Surely not.
- Commentary
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Book Ten Spring Love Poems 1892
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Spring Love Poems"
This poem laments that its own brooding runs deeper than that of a warbler lost in the mist of the spring hills. Overlaying the bird that has lost its way with the speaker bewildered by love, it shows through a rhetorical question that the speaker bears a still deeper grief. Like 1890 it begins "haruyama no" and shares with it the device of entrusting love to the warbler.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a court poet of the Asuka period, active under Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu. The left note records that this poem comes from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection, and it is uncertain whether it is Hitomaro's own work or a poem by someone else that he recorded.
The first line, "of the spring hills," is the same opening as 1890, linking the warbler poems of the spring love section.
In the second line, "kiri ni madoeru," "ru" is the attributive of the continuative "ri," showing the warbler losing its way in the mist.
In the third line, "uguisu mo," "mo" marks likeness: the warbler too.
The fourth line, "more than I," compares the warbler's brooding with the speaker's.
In the last line, "mono omowame ya mo," "me ya mo" is rhetorical: would it brood? surely not. It closes by asserting firmly that the speaker's grief is the deeper.
- Author
- Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
- Source
- Manyoshu
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