Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/49

Rh

On an evening when the spring mists Trail over the wide sea, And sad is the voice of the cranes I think of my far-off home.

Thinking of home, Sleepless I sit, The cranes call amid the shore reeds, Lost in the mists of spring. Ōtomo Yakamochi

An elegy on the impermanence of human life

We are helpless before time Which ever speeds away. And pains of a hundred kinds Pursue us one after another. Maidens joy in girlish pleasures, With ship-borne gems on their wrists, And hand in hand with their friends; But the bloom of maidenhood, As it cannot be stopped, Too swiftly steals away. When do their ample tresses Black as a mud-snail’s bowels Turn white with the frost of age? Whence come those wrinkles Which furrow their rosy cheeks? The lusty young men, warrior-like, Bearing their sword blades at their waists, In their hands the hunting bows, And mounting their bay horses, With saddles dressed with twill,