橘の下吹く風のかぐはしき
筑波の山を恋ひずあらめかも
筑波の山を恋ひずあらめかも
- Roma-ji
-
Tachibana no shita fuku kaze no kaguwashiki Tsukuba no yama o koizu arame kamo
- English Translation
-
Beneath the orange
the breeze that blows there carries
such a sweet fragrance;
Tsukuba, my mountain, how
could I not long for you so?
- Meaning
- As fragrant as the breeze blowing beneath the mandarin orange trees is Mount Tsukuba; how could I not long for it?
- Commentary
-
Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4371
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems of the frontier guards sent in rotation to the provinces of Tsukushi in the second month of Tenpyō Shōhō 7, year of the wood sheep."
How could I not long for Mount Tsukuba, fragrant as the breeze beneath the mandarin orange? The poem sings of longing for the mountain of home. It is the ninth poem from Hitachi. Praising Tsukuba as fragrant, it joins pride in his home with longing for it.
The author, Urabe no Hirokata, is recorded as an assistant guard from Hitachi; nothing more is known of him.
The first line, "tachibana no," names the fragrant evergreen mandarin orange, leading to "the breeze beneath."
The second line, "shita fuku kaze no," "the wind blowing beneath it": the first two lines form a preface leading to kaguwashiki.
The third line, "kaguwashiki," "fragrant, enchanting," turns from the scent of the preface to the dearness of Mount Tsukuba.
The fourth line, "Tsukuba no yama o," names the famous mountain of Hitachi, sung of again and again in this book's Hitachi poems.
The closing line, "koizu arame kamo," uses mekamo as a rhetorical question: how could I not long for it?
- Author
- Urabe no Hirokata
- Source
- Manyoshu
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