Composed on Love, when she presented a Hundred Poem Sequence.
ながからん心もしらずくろかみのみだれてけさは物をこそおもへ
| nagakaran kokoro mo sirazu kurokami no midarete kesa Fa mono wo koso omoFe | How long might Your feelings be? I know not; My raven tresses Are tangled this morning, as My gloomy thoughts! |
Taikenmon’in no Horikawa
Rather odd romanization. は is really HA and is sometimes pronounced WA in Modern Japanese. Similarly, へ is really HÈ and is sometimes pronounced È in Modern Japanese. Only ふ conventionally romanized as FU comes close to an F sound. However, the Japanese version is bilabial while English and other European languages of which I am familiar have a labial-dental sound. Maybe I should reread The Phonology of Eighth-Century Japanese.
Thank you for your comment. The romanisation used here is intended to approximate the pronunciation of Late Old, or Early Middle (depending upon one’s preferred nomenclature), Japanese and thus how the poems would have been read aloud when they were composed, and not as they are now in modern Japanese.There are some brief notes on the phonology of the language here which you may find informative.