On both of them alike
I lean for shade—these pines whose
roots have been entwined
since they were two green shoots, on
to the far ends of their boughs

Meaning

On both alike I lean for shade—these pines whose roots have been entwined since they were two green shoots, on to the far ends of their branches.

Commentary

Part One: Fujiura

　Yugiri's nurse Saisho had not forgotten how, when the Chancellor was still Minister of the Center, the little Yugiri had been slighted for his sixth rank and dismissed by the nurses as "a sixth-rank match"; and so now, seeing the two happily united and the Chancellor making much of his son-in-law, she made this poem with an air of triumph. The old women went on trading verses in this vein, which Yugiri found amusing; but Kumoinokari blushed for no reason and thought it painful to hear.

　"On both alike I lean for shade" is: I look to both of them. "Futaba" is a pair of new shoots—the two as children. "Pines whose roots are entwined" are the twin pines of legend, a figure for a bond formed young and deep. "Suezue," the far ends, plays on the pine's high boughs and belongs to its imagery. The "air of triumph" comes of the very slight she remembers, so that the poem carries a proud sense that the young man once looked down upon has risen to this. It blesses the couple's long life through the twin pines—a felicitous poem, though an awkward one for Kumoinokari herself to hear. With this exchange of congratulation the long-smoldering story of Yugiri and Kumoinokari comes to its happy close.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

On both of them alike I lean for shade—these pines whose roots have been entwined since they were two green shoots, on to the far ends of their boughs

On both of them alike
I lean for shade—these pines whose
roots have been entwined
since they were two green shoots, on
to the far ends of their boughs