離れ磯に立てるむろの木うたがたも
久しき時を過ぎにけるかも
久しき時を過ぎにけるかも
- Roma-ji
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Hanareso ni tateru muro no ki utagata mo hisashiki toki o suginikeru kamo
- English Translation
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On the lone sea rock
the juniper stands;
surely, surely
long years and ages
it has seen pass by
- Meaning
- The juniper standing on the lone rock in the sea must surely have passed through long, long ages.
- Commentary
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Book Fifteen Poems of the Envoys to Silla 3600
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "The envoys sent to Silla grieve at parting and exchange poems, express their sorrowful feelings on the sea route, and recite old poems suited to the places they pass"
Seeing a single juniper standing on a lone rock in the sea, he is moved to think how long it must have stood there through the years. In the isolated tree he sees the flow of unending time, and the feeling of one on a journey is folded into it. The juniper was famed as a noted tree of Tomo Bay, recalling the poems from Book Three, 446 onward, in which Ōtomo no Tabito mourned his late wife by the juniper of Tomo. The next poem, 3601, also sings of this tree, and the two form a pair.
A left note reads "the above eight poems were composed after boarding the ship and entering the sea route"; the eight poems from 3594 to 3601 were made once the ship had put out to sea. The author is not named.
First line, "hanareso ni": a rock jutting from the sea away from the shore, showing isolation.
Second line, "tateru muro no ki": "ru" is the attributive of the continuative auxiliary "ri": the juniper standing there. The "muro" tree is thought to be the needle juniper, an evergreen.
Third line, "utagata mo": an adverb meaning surely, certainly, answering the conjecture in the last line.
Fourth line, "hisashiki toki o": long years, expressing the length of time the tree has passed.
Fifth line, "suginikeru kamo": "ni" is perfective and "keru kamo" exclamatory: how long it has lived through, the poem ends in wonder.
- Source
- Manyoshu
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Tsukuyomi no hikari o kiyomi Kamishima no isomi no ura yu funade su ware wa
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Shimashiku mo hitori ariuru mono ni are ya shima no muro no ki hanarete aruramu