A Peacock Perched on a Maple Tree
Utagawa Hiroshige Japanese
Not on view
Occasionally, Hiroshige incorporated lines from Chinese poems, rather than Japanese ones, into his bird-and-flower compositions. Here, the verse by the Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772–846) is among those included in the early eleventh-century anthology Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing (Wakan rōeishū):
不堪紅葉青苔地 又是涼風暮雨天
Taezu kōyō seitai no chi mata kore ryōfū bou no ten
How moving:
Earth covered with green moss
scattered with crimson leaves.
And then even more so:
Skies filled with evening rain
as a cool wind blows.
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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