Text

西大寺のほとりの柳をよめる

僧正遍昭

浅緑　糸よりかけて　白露を　珠にもぬける　春の柳か

Translation

西大寺: A number of manuscripts, and the Template:Teika read this as にしのおほでら. It was one of the "Seven Great Temples" of Nara, established in 765.

浅緑: The light green color of the willow. There is some question over the grammatical relation of this word to the rest of the poem, but the majority reading seems the most natural, that this is the color of the "thread" (浅緑の糸).

珠にもぬける春の柳か: The image here is of the willow threading the dew as if they were beads with holes in them. The か is emphatic, and by Template:Denju's time this was felt to be a no-longer-acceptable substitute for かな.; A number of alternate texts read 珠にもぬくか　春のあをやぎ instead. The Template:Nativist prefers this version, positing that someone changed the last line to 柳か to avoid duplicating the mention of the color in the first line, and then had to change the fourth line to prevent the duplication of か. Template:Modern and Katagiri both agree that this is a likely theory; Kubota thinks the alternate reading sounds more in the style of the MYS.