春されば水草の上に置く霜の
消につつも我れは恋ひわたるかも
消につつも我れは恋ひわたるかも
- Roma-ji
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Haru sareba mikusa no ue ni oku shimo no ketsutsu mo are wa koiwataru ka mo
- English Translation
-
When the spring comes round,
on the grasses by the stream
the frost that settles—
like it, though I fade away,
still I go on with my love.
- Meaning
- Like the frost that settles on the water grasses when spring comes and melts away, I feel myself fading, yet I go on loving still.
- Commentary
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Book Ten Spring Love Poems 1908
Headnote: "Love Expressed Through Frost"
Taking as its preface the frost that settles on the water grasses in spring and fleetingly melts, this poem sings of a heart that goes on loving while feeling itself fade away. Its headnote is "Love Expressed Through Frost." The fragility of spring frost impresses the sense of body and soul wasting away with love. Like the spring snow whose fragility was sung in the snow group of the miscellaneous poems, spring frost is here sung as something that vanishes.
The first line, "when spring comes," marks the season.
The second line, "on the water grasses," is hypermetric.
The third line, "the frost that settles," with the upper lines forming a preface leading into "ke," to vanish.
In the fourth line, "ketsutsu mo," "ke" is the continuative of "ku," to vanish, and "tsutsu" marks repetition: though again and again I seem to fade.
In the last line, "are wa koiwataru ka mo," "wataru" means to continue and "ka mo" is exclamatory.
- Source
- Manyoshu
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