Tanka 8
If pleasures be mine As aeons and aeons roll by, Why should I repine That under some future sky I may live as butterfly ?
Sadakichi Hartmann
If pleasures be mine As aeons and aeons roll by, Why should I repine That under some future sky I may live as butterfly ?
The speaker imagines pleasure lasting across “aeons and aeons,” so vast that one lifetime’s worries shrink into insignificance. If joy is already his in such long measure, he asks, why complain that someday, under another sky, he might live as a butterfly?
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