Can my home have vanished, leaving not even the fence?
Were I now to open this casket,
Might it not appear as before?'
So saying, he opened a little the precious casket,
Whereupon a white cloud issued from it
And spread away towards the immortal land.
He ran, he shouted, he waved his sleeves,
He writhed upon the earth, and ground his feet together.
Of a sudden his heart melted away;
Wrinkles covered his body, that had been so youthful;
His hair, that had been so black, became white.
By-and-by his breath also failed;
At last his life departed.
And, lo! here once stood the cottage
Of Urashima of Midzunoye."
Like most Naga-uta, the above is followed by a thirty-one syllable poem known as a Hanka. The Hanka sometimes echoes the principal idea of the poem which precedes, and is at others employed as a sort of poetical save-all to utilise any stray scrap of thought or imagery which it may not have been convenient to include in the principal poem. Some Naga-uta have several Hanka appended to them.
Hanka
"In the immortal land
He might have gone on to dwell;
But by his nature
How dull was he, this wight!"
The authors of the two following lyrics are unnamed.
Mount Fuji (Fujiyama)
"Where on the one hand is the province of Kai,
And on the other the land of Suruga,
Right in the midst between them
Stands out the high peak of Fuji.
The very clouds of heaven dread to approach it;
Even the soaring birds reach not its summit in their flight.
