classic waka stream

来ぬ人をまつの葉に降るしら雪の
消えこそかへれあはぬ思ひに
Roma-ji

Konu hito o matsu no ha ni furu shirayuki no kie koso kaere awanu omoi ni

English Translation
The white snow that falls
on the pine — on my waiting —
for one who will not
come, melts clean away in the
fire of a love unanswered
Meaning
The white snow falling on the pine, on my waiting for one who will not come, melts clean away in the fire of a love unanswered.
Commentary
139 The River Akuta

In the reign of the late Emperor Daigo, a woman known as the Lady of the Middle Counsellor served the consort who lived in the Jōkyōden. The late Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs, then still young and given to love, lived nearby, and hearing that there were people of taste there he used to go and talk with them. In time he began sleeping with this Lady in secret. They lay together now and then, but before long he had almost ceased to come, and she sent him "Hito o toku Akutagawa chō tsu no kuni no naniwa tagawanu kimi ni zo arikeru". She could not eat, and wept, and pined as though ill; and one day, breaking off a branch of the pine before the Jōkyōden with snow lying on it, she composed "Konu hito o matsu no ha ni furu shirayuki no kie koso kaere awanu omoi ni". She told the messenger on no account to shake the snow off, and sent branch and poem to the prince. That is the whole of the section.
Emperor Daigo appears in the hundred and thirty-first through hundred and thirty-fourth sections. The Jōkyōden was one of the halls of the women's quarters, mentioned also in the sixty-fifth section. The Lady of the Middle Counsellor served there. The Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs appears in the ninetieth, hundred and sixth, hundred and seventh and hundred and thirty-seventh sections, and again in the hundred and fortieth.
The setting is before the Jōkyōden, with snow lying on the pine.
What prompted the poem was her breaking off a snow-laden branch. The poem went with it.
She told the messenger on no account to shake the snow off, and sent branch and poem to the prince. The section closes on that sentence. The poem was later included in the Gosen-shū.

The word in the second line means both waiting and a pine, so that waiting for one who does not come and the tree itself are one word.
The white snow on the pine needles is simply what lay before her, taken straight into the poem.
What follows means melting clean away, with an emphatic particle governing the verb.
The word for longing in the last line is also the word for fire, so that the snow melts in the fire of a love that goes unanswered. Her instruction to the messenger not to shake the snow off follows from the fact that the poem and the actual snow are one thing: the snow melting on arrival completes the sense. It is an extreme case of gift and verse working together.
Source
Yamato Monogatari
Other