Uguisu no nakedomo imada furu yuki ni sugi no ha shiroki Ōsaka no yama

English Translation

The warbler is here
and sings, yet the snow still falls
and under its weight
the cedar leaves have gone white
on Osaka's mountainside

Meaning

The warbler sings, and still the snow comes down, so that the cedar needles have turned white on the mountain at Osaka.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 18

Headnote: composed at the Bureau of Poetry on the theme of a warbler on the barrier road.
Where the previous poem waited for the warbler, here the bird is already singing. Yet snow still falls on the mountain and the cedars remain white. The headnote places the poem at the Bureau of Poetry, on the assigned topic of a warbler on the barrier road; the Bureau was the poetry office revived by Go-Toba in 1201.
The poet, given as Retired Emperor, is Go-Toba, the same as in the second poem; this is his second appearance in the book.
The season is early spring; the place is the mountain at Osaka on the border of Yamashiro and Omi. A barrier stood there, on the main road east out of the capital, and it had long been written of in verse. The barrier road of the topic is that road.
The occasion was composition to a set topic at the Bureau of Poetry.

A concessive particle in the second line turns the sentence: the bird does sing, and yet. In that one word the sign of spring is set against the remains of winter.
The particle closing the third line marks cause: because the snow is falling.
The fourth line stands in the attributive form and reaches down to the mountain named below. Cedar is an evergreen, and to see its deep green covered over in white is to be told exactly how much snow has fallen and how cold it is.
The poem ends on a noun. Placing the name last gathers both elements, the bird's voice and the whitened cedars, into a single location.
Spring is heard and winter seen, and the two are laid over one landscape. The poem belongs to the run of pieces, beginning with the eighth, in which winter and spring occupy the same scene.

Author

Go-Toba In

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other