雪深き汀の小芹誰がために
摘みかはやさむ親なしにして
摘みかはやさむ親なしにして
- Roma-ji
-
Yuki fukaki migiwa no koseri ta ga tame ni
tsumi ka hayasamu oya nashi ni shite - English Translation
-
For whose sake now should
I gather and make much of
the little cress at
the deep-snowed edge of the stream,
having no parent living
- Meaning
- For whose sake should I gather and make much of the little cress at the snow-deep water's edge, having no parent left?
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
Naka no Kimi added this after her sister's poem on the bracken. Looking at the cress the abbot had sent, she laments that there is no longer a father to set it before. The pair of poems closes here, and once the sisters' solitude has been pressed on the reader the scene turns to spring.
The little cress at the water's edge grows by the stream and, with bracken, belongs to the greens of early spring. The ko of koseri sounds as ko, child, and pairs with "no parent" in the closing line. Tsumi kawayasu is to gather and prize a thing, that is, to receive a gift with pleasure. With no one left to be pleased, the season's bounty means nothing, and parent and child, set as a pair, hold the lament up.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The foot of the oak I had trusted for the shade I might turn aside to has become, I find now, an empty seat and nothing
- Had I been able to see them as bracken shoots you had picked yourself on the peak, I might have known them for a sign of springtime
- The cherry I saw at your house at second hand— this spring let me go with no haze set between us, break it off and wear the spray
- Where would you suppose you were coming, that you might break the cherry off at this house of ours, closed in with the haze of mourning dye