Frost and ice have set
so bitterly, and the sky
in the dark of dawn
I darken further still with
these tears of mine, falling, falling

Meaning

Frost and ice have closed in so bitterly, and the dim sky before dawn I darken further still with these tears of mine, falling.

Commentary

Part One: Otome

　On the night Kumoinokari left for her father's house, Yugiri lay in his room and listened to the carriages going out. Though summoned to his grandmother's presence, he lay as if asleep and would not move, and he wept the night through. Early the next morning, while the frost still lay white, he set out in haste—ashamed to let anyone see how his eyes were swollen, and afraid his grandmother would call him to her side—for the study rooms at the east lodge of Nijo, where he need answer to no one. Along the way, telling himself that the sorrow was of his own making and no one else's, he found the sky heavily overcast and still dark. It was then that he made this poem.

　"Shimo-gori" is frost and ice. "Utate" is an adverb meaning grievously, wretchedly, the more so. "Musubu" is for frost and ice to congeal, and it sounds as well the closing of the heart. "Akegure" is the dimness before daybreak. "Kakikurashi," to overcast wholly, carries also the darkening of sight by tears. The frost and ice outside and the dark sky above are one with the freezing and the weeping within, and the single word "falling" joins his tears to the weather. The grief of a boy's first loss is spoken entirely through a winter dawn.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Frost and ice have set so bitterly, and the sky in the dark of dawn I darken further still with these tears of mine, falling, falling

Frost and ice have set
so bitterly, and the sky
in the dark of dawn
I darken further still with
these tears of mine, falling, falling