み吉野の山べにさけるさくら花
雪かとのみぞあやまたてける
雪かとのみぞあやまたてける
- Roma-ji
-
Miyoshino no yamabe ni sakeru sakurabana
yuki ka to nomi zo ayamatatekeru - English Translation
-
On Mount Yoshino’s slopes the cherry blossoms bloom—
so white that I mistook them only for snow.
- Meaning
- The cherry blossoms blooming along the slopes of Mount Yoshino—I mistook them for nothing but snow.
- Commentary
-
Spring Songs, Book One
A poem from the poetry contest of the imperial women’s quarters in the Kanpyō era.
Mount Yoshino was known as a deep mountain with much snow, and so the poet sings of mistaking the cherry blossoms for snow.
- Author
- Ki no Tomonori
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Who was it sought and plucked, I wonder, spring haze— rising to hide the mountain’s cherry blossoms?
- The cherry blossoms have bloomed, it seems— from the mountain’s ravines appear white clouds.
- O cherry blossoms, in a year when spring days abound, will you not let the human heart be sated?
- Why call it fickle, the cherry blossoms? They, too, waited for one who comes but rarely in a year.