The speaker imagines cutting a branch of cherry blossom and using it like a wand to enchant someone. There is a frank cruelty in the gesture: the beauty offered is deliberately fleeting, “a beautiful thing that can never grow wise.” The love promised here is even lighter than falling petals—no lasting devotion, only one exquisite spring day made precious because it cannot last. The mood is delicate, cool, and a little unsettling. Tenderness appears in the image of blossoms falling in the night wind, but so does a deliberate parting: the speaker leaves “to be kind,” as if the brevity is the gift. By the final refrain, that choice feels almost triumphant, a spell cast with bright, short-lived flowers that will not outstay their hour.
The Cherry-Blossom Wand — Summary
(To be sung) I WILL pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand, And carry it in my merciless hand, So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes, With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise.
Light are the petals that fall from the bough, And lighter the love that I offer you now; In a spring day shall the tale be told Of the beautiful things that will never grow old.
The blossoms shall fall in the night wind. And I will leave you so, to be kind: Eternal in beauty are short-lived flowers. Eternal in beauty, these exquisite hours.
I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand, And carry it in my merciless hand, So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes. What a beautiful thing that shall never grow wise.