下紅葉一葉づつ散る木の下に
秋と覚ゆる蝉の声かな
秋と覚ゆる蝉の声かな
- Roma-ji
-
Shitamomiji hitoha zutsu chiru ko no shita ni aki to oboyuru semi no koe kana
- English Translation
-
Beneath the tree
where the lower leaves turned red
fall one by one,
how like autumn it now sounds,
the singing of the cicadas!
- Meaning
- Beneath the tree whose lower leaves, already red, are falling one by one, the cicadas' song sounds just like autumn.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Summer Poems 80
At summer's end, the lower leaves of a tree have already colored and begun to fall one at a time, and the poet senses autumn even in the cicadas' song heard beneath it. The poem delicately captures the shift from summer to autumn through both sight and sound.
Like the next poem, 81, this poem anticipates the coming of autumn at the close of the Summer book. Seeing the change of season in the small sign of leaves falling one by one, it leads into the autumn poems of the next book.
First line refers to the lower leaves of a tree coloring before the rest.
Second line, "one by one," shows how slight the first signs of autumn still are.
Third line shows where the poet hears the cicadas.
Fourth line, "how like autumn," conveys the cicadas' summer song sounding like autumn.
Fifth line closes with the exclamatory particle kana.
- Author
- Sagami
- Source
- Shika Wakashu
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