Tanka 5 — Summary

Love has grown cold, yet the speaker looks around and sees the woods still bright with flowers. That contrast sets up the whole poem: personal loss against nature’s continuing beauty. Rather than staying indoors with disappointment, the speaker half-asks, half-urges someone (perhaps himself, perhaps a loved one) to go back to the wildwood bowers, the leafy retreats they knew before. There they can dream of bygone hours—old times that are now gone. The dash before “bygone hours” creates a wistful catch in the voice, as if the past is both treasured and painful. The mood is bittersweet and reflective. The poem does not pretend that love can return or that the past can be recovered; it only suggests that returning to a familiar, blooming place may soften the ache and allow memory to be a kind of comfort.