The old tree of those
days has rotted away, no doubt,
and well it might—for
even the young pine we planted
has grown its coat of moss

Meaning

The old tree of those days has rotted away, no doubt, and well it might—for even the young pine we planted has grown its moss.

Commentary

Part One: Fujiura

　Overcome by the scattered practice poems, the Chancellor said that he would like to ask the stream what was in its heart, but that an old man should hold his tongue against ill-omened words; and he made this poem. It answers the exchange in which his daughter and son-in-law had mourned the late Princess. For him the Sanjo house was where he himself had grown up, and to see his daughter and her husband now making their home there moved him deeply.

　"Sono kami" is those days, that time. "The old tree" is the Princess. "Mube mo" is no wonder, fittingly. "Kuchinuramu" is: it will have decayed. "The young pine we planted" is himself. It is only right that the old tree should be gone, he says, since even the pine that stands for his own younger self has moss upon it now; and so he sets his mother's death beside his own aging. Where the young couple asked the water about the dead, he answers with trees—old timber and young pine—and takes the turning of the generations quietly to heart. After his long contest of wills with Yugiri, this shared mourning for the one who raised them quietly seals the peace between the two houses.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

The old tree of those days has rotted away, no doubt, and well it might—for even the young pine we planted has grown its coat of moss

The old tree of those
days has rotted away, no doubt,
and well it might—for
even the young pine we planted
has grown its coat of moss