Left.
名に立てる老蘇の杜の下草も年若しとや二葉なるらん
na ni tateru oiso no mori no shita kusa mo toshi wakashi to ya futaba naruran |
By repute, Ancient is the sacred grove of Oiso, yet Here, too, the undergrowth, Perhaps with the year’s youth, Puts forth new leaves. |
41
Right (Win).
霜置きし去年の枯葉の殘るませにそれとも見えぬ春の若草
shimo okishi kozo no kareha no nokoru mase ni sore tomo mienu haru no waka kusa |
Frost fell Last year on the withered leaves Remaining on this brushwood fence, yet It does not seem so for The fresh growth of spring. |
42
The Right team have nothing to say about the Left’s poem in this round, while the Left merely wonder whether the fact that the Right’s poem has six syllables in its middle line means that it doesn’t scan correctly.
Shunzei comments testily that fashionably using expressions with contradictory connotations, such as the ‘ancient sacred grove’ and ‘year’s youth’ is ‘platitudinous’. The Right’s poem, however, is ‘without doubt, extremely affecting’. There are many cases where lines with six or seven syllables are used in place of a five syllable one in the centre of a poem – particularly when the final line is ‘independent’, although this has yet to be ‘well understood’. So, for appropriately using this, the right deserves the victory.