峰の雪みぎはの氷踏み分けて
君にぞ惑ふ道は惑はず
君にぞ惑ふ道は惑はず
- Roma-ji
-
Mine no yuki migiwa no kōri fumiwakete
kimi ni zo madou michi wa madowazu - English Translation
-
I have come pushing
through snow on the peak, through ice
along the water:
on the road I do not lose
my way; for you I lose it
- Meaning
- I have come pushing through the snow on the peak and the ice along the water; on the road I do not lose my way—it is for you that I lose it.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Ukifune
Having crossed past the orange isle to the far bank, Niou and Ukifune spent two days at the hideaway. Bringing up the hardship of the snowy mountain road he had forced his way along, he spoke this poem to her. She answered it. Back in the capital, worn out by the strain he had put himself to, Niou fell ill, and his visits to Uji again became rare.
Snow on the peak and ice at the water's edge are the hard places he has crossed, set side by side to press the labour of it. Fumiwakete is to push through snow, and states the journey as it was. The second half repeats madou twice, dividing the sense: on the road he does not lose his way, but for her he does. Using one word twice in two senses is what carries the ardour of the poem.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Though the years go by, is this a heart that will change— the heart that I pledge to you at the headland of the little isle of orange
- The colour of the little isle of orange will not change—but this boat adrift upon the water, and where it goes none can know
- More surely than snow that falls in confusion and freezes at the shore, it is I who shall melt out of the middle of the sky
- Even the clouds in that quarter where you are can no longer be seen: how forlorn a season, when the very sky is darkening