Winter I: 25

Left.

大原や野邊の御幸に所得て空取る今日の眞白斑の鷹

ōhara ya
nobe no miyuki ni
tokoro ete
soratoru kyō no
mashirō no taka
Ōhara
Plain for an Imperial Progress is
Most apt;
Catching prey a’wing this day
Is a white banded hawk!

Kenshō.

529

Right (Win).

嵯峨の原走る雉子の形跡は今日の御幸に隱れなき哉

saga no hara
hashiru kigisu no
kata ato wa
kyō no miyuki ni
kakurenaki kana
On the field of Saga
Racing, the pheasants’
Tracks
Today’s Imperial Progress
Will not come at all…

Tsune’ie.

530

The Right state that ‘most apt’ (tokoro ete) is rarely heard in poems. The Left reply that ‘track’ (kata ato) is the same.

Shunzei’s judgement: The poem of the Left sounds grandiose, but there is something dubious about it. When starting with Ōhara (ōhara ya), one expects it to be followed by ‘Oshio Mountain’, as it suggests the field of Ōhara. Without that following Oshio Mountain, when one encounters Ōhara, on recollects both ‘misty clear waters’ and ‘waters of a pure, peaceful well’, and does not know to which the Ōhara refers. There is no precedent at all for Imperial vists to the Ōhara which lies at the foot of Mount Hiei. There are, however, for visits to Mount Oshio. In the poem on ‘waters of a pure, peaceful well’, it states that ‘though there are no birds, we visit for our pleasure’, so it would be impossible for the ‘white banded hawk’ to take prey a’wing there. I have heard ‘tracks’ before, but the poem has little sense of truly knowing ‘Saga Field’, yet there have, without doubt, been Imperial visits there, so ‘tracks’ must be the better poem.

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