The spring sea all day rising and falling rising and falling^[1] haru no umi hinemosu notari notari kana 春の海 終日のたり のたり哉 buson 蕪村

Yosa Buson's verse puts the slow motion of a calm sea into its sound. The doubled word のたりのたり takes as long to say as a swell takes to pass, and the sea keeps at it all day. Readers have praised it as plain and calm. They have not agreed where to look: at waves on the shore, farther out, or across the whole face of the sea.

In the Japanese, 春の海 is the spring sea, the season word. 終日, hinemosu, is all day long. のたりのたり is a slow heave of the water, moving at ease, and 哉 closes the line. Some of the hands write words in kana: one gives 終日 as ひねもす, and another ends on かな for 哉.

Translation Notes:

This haiku by Buson consists of the words 春 (read haru) meaning "spring", 海 (read umi) meaning "sea; ocean", 終日 (read hinemosu) meaning "all day long; the whole day", and のたりのたり (read notarinotari) meaning "undulating; rolling slowly; gently swelling". Also notice that the final 哉 (read kana) is often written in either hiragana or kanji and this does not change the meaning.

References:

[1] After Haruo Shirane, The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 412.

The verse is Buson's; the earliest print of it read here is the appendix of Shōzan's anthology 俳諧古選, printed in 1763, and Ebara Taizō placed it among Buson's verses of the Hōreki years, which ended in 1764.