To celebrate the incoming return of spring, I thought I would share some waka along this great article by National Geographic :
For the first poem, here is a cool video of the uguisu (鶯) singing :
古今集 06 - Monk Sosei
春立てば花とや見らむ白雪の懸かれる枝に鶯ぞ鳴く
Springtime is here -
is he seeing flowers instead
of the white snow
clinging to the branches,
the singing bush warbler ?
古今集 28 - Unknown author
百千鳥さへづる春は物ごとに改まれども我ぞ旧り行く
So many birds are
singing in springtime ;
every living thing
growing young again. But me,
I’m only getting older…
古今集 53 - Ariwara no Narihira
世の中に絶えて桜の無かりせば春の心はのどけからまし
In this world of ours
if there were no such things
as cherry flowers,
the human heart, during spring,
would certainly be peaceful.
Notes
古今集 06
I’ve read 2 different translations of this one. The first was writing the poet as the one who took the snow for flowers. It was talking at the first person, and the branches of the trees where just a place where the bird was singing for no particular reason. The second was taking the bird as the one who was confused and I think it’s way more interesting like that and that it even makes more sense when we look at some of the particles used here. The ば is taking the spring as a condition I believe, a cause ; and the ぞ puts emphasis on the bird. There is also the らむ : its function here is, I believe, “speculation about a cause” (I just read it in the book of Haruo Shirane) where the writer is conjecturing about the reason of something, especially here with the interrogative や. So I think the most correct and interesting translation is basically saying : spring is here, so, is the bird seeing flowers instead of snow, and is that the reason why he’s singing ?
古今集 28
さへづる = 囀る // さえずる : to sing, to chirp
ごと : every
あらたまれども < 改まる (to change, to be renewed [I took a little inspiration from Helen McCullough’s translation who used the words “new youth” to create a contrast with the last line]) + ども (but)
旧り行く = ふりゆく : to get old
物 : thing ; but the meaning “living things” is clearly implied here.
古今集 53
絶えて桜の無かりせば : if there were no cherry blossoms ; if cherry flowers were completely non-existent… ; we have the ば of the ば…まし structure that we found in poem 98 at the very beginning of the thread.
のどけから - まし< 長閑けし : calm, peaceful
春の心 : it was confusing when I read that for the first time, but I think the の should not be interpreted as literally “the heart of spring”, but rather “the heart AT spring”, “the heart during spring”.
I literally spent hours translating, understanding these poems while looking at my reference grammar books, and writing this post, I feel like my brain is melting now 
I am slow, and it’s still very hard, but very satisfying.
The incredible cherry trees will be in full bloom very soon ; their beauty will delight us for a moment, before disappearing. They come into this world and disappear from it so fast, it almost looks like a dream. There are a lot of poems in the Kokinshû and Shinkokinshû about impermanence and the resemblance between reality and ephemeral dreams, I will probably post some waka about this. It’s very linked of course to the buddhist sensibility that we can also find for example in the Hôjôki and Heike monogatari.