Longing for you, my love, but not knowing what to do, I had my white-cloth sleeve turned. Have I appeared in your dreams?

Even on spring days you work the fields and tire yourself, my love.
With no wife like young grass you work the fields and tire yourself.

With a basket, a lovely basket,
with a trowel, a lovely trowel,
you pick herbs on this hill, child,
I ask you about your house, tell me.
This sky-filling land of Yamato,
I am the one who rules it all,
seated, I govern it all.
I will tell you
my house and my name.

Three ladies went a-walking
Among the garden bowers;
They said: “Would we had with us
Those lovers brave of ours.”
A little bird, all silent,
Listened among the flowers.

“What will you pay me, ladies,
To be ambassador?”
The first said: “I will pay thee
This purse of gold, and more.”

“I will pay,” said the second,
“A nosegay sweet, like this.”
And the third, who was the fairest:
“I will pay a true-love kiss.”

The little bird went flying
Past tower and roof and tree,
From hall to hall, until he came

Last night no comb held back my hair,
My silken tresses covered both my shoulders
As I stretched myself upon your knees
Was I not made for love?

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.

I gave the grasp of partnership
To one of other race--
A plane: he barked him strip by strip
From upper bough to base;
And me therewith; for gone my grip,
My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove
To coll an ash I saw,
And he in trust received my love;
Till with my soft green claw
I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .

O hands that I have held in mine,
That knew my kisses and my tears,
Hands that in other years
Have poured my balm, have poured my wine;

Women, once loved, and always mine,
I call to you across the years,
I bring a gift of tears,
I bring my tears to you as wine.

At morn I plucked a rose and gave it Thee,
A rose of joy and happy love and peace,
A rose with scarce a thorn:
But in the chillness of a second morn
My rose bush drooped, and all its gay increase
Was but one thorn that wounded me.

I plucked the thorn and offered it to Thee;
And for my thorn Thou gavest love and peace,
Not joy this mortal morn:
If Thou hast given much treasure for a thorn,
Wilt Thou not give me for my rose increase
Of gladness, and all sweets to me?

My thorny rose, my love and pain, to Thee

Nay, lady, one frown is enough
In a life as soon over as this—
And though minutes seem long in a huff,
They're minutes 'tis pity to miss!
The smiles you imprison so lightly
Are reckon'd, like days in eclipse;
And though you may smile again brightly,
You've lost so much light from your lips!
Pray, lady, smile!

The cup that is longest untasted
May be with our bliss running o'er,
And, love when we will, we have wasted
An age in not loving before!
Perchance Cupid's forging a fetter
To tie us together some day,

O judgment sleep!
I love an unkind thief.
Let me be friend of Frailty
For my sick heart's relief.

I would be as the shore's sand
Subject to an advancing sea,
I would be as sunken land
Swept by a tide's strong mastery.

But my contemning mind is as a lighthouse tower,
And I am sore for strength, and lashed because of power.