見てのみぞ驚かれぬるぬばたまの
夢かと思ひし春の残れる
夢かと思ひし春の残れる
- Roma-ji
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Mite nomi zo odorokarenuru nubatama no yume ka to omoishi haru no nokoreru
- English Translation
-
Just at a glance, how
I was startled and amazed—
as a jet-black dream
I had thought it all had passed,
yet here the spring still lingers.
- Meaning
- Just seeing it startled me—here still lingers the spring I had thought was gone like a dream.
- Commentary
-
Spring Poems 132
Headnote: "Composed in summer on seeing a folding screen painted with a spring landscape"
The poet composed this in summer on seeing a folding screen painted with a spring landscape. Spring had already passed and seemed fleeting as a dream, yet he is startled to find it still lingering in the screen. Confirming his longing for the vanished season through the spring in the painting, the poem closes the spring section. Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle and remarked on its orthography: there is no precedent for writing nubatama with the characters for "crow-feather jewel," a later misunderstanding, since the Man'yōshū characters meant a black jewel.
The Ruijū text places it among the miscellaneous poems, with the headnote "On a place where spring is painted on a screen…." The original headnote reads "painted place," with a character apparently missing.
Line 1: nomi limits and zo binds, stressing "just by seeing." It echoes "This morning I look" in the opening poem, 1, in that spring is known by looking.
Line 2: re is spontaneous, "I was startled despite myself"; it is the attributive concluding zo, and the poem pauses here.
Line 3, nubatama no, is a pillow word for "dream."
Line 4 means "I had thought it a dream," showing the fleetingness of the spring gone by; it recalls "was it a dream, or was it real" in 72.
Line 5 ends on the attributive of the resultative ri, leaving a lingering mood. The spring that came down from heaven in poem 1 is here sung as spring remaining in a screen, so the beginning and end of the spring section answer each other.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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