山深みなほ影寒し春の月
空かき曇り雪は降りつつ
空かき曇り雪は降りつつ
- Roma-ji
-
Yama fukami nao kage samushi haru no tsuki sora kakikumori yuki wa furitsutsu
- English Translation
-
The mountains are deep
and its light is cold as yet
this moon of the spring
the sky has clouded over
and the snow keeps on falling
- Meaning
- So deep are the mountains that the spring moon's light is cold still; the sky has closed over, and the snow goes on falling.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 24
Headnote: composed at the Bureau of Poetry on the theme of the moon over spring mountains.
The moon of a spring night again. Where the previous poem showed a moon that would not blur, this one takes the moon among mountains and follows it until snow clouds hide the light. The headnote places the poem at the Bureau of Poetry, on the assigned topic of the moon over spring mountains.
Echizen was a lady-in-waiting and poet in the service of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, but little is recorded of her life. Her name is that of a province on the Hokuriku road, used in the manner of court ladies' names.
The season is a night in early spring; the place is deep in the mountains.
The occasion was composition to a set topic at the Bureau of Poetry.
The first line, an adjective stem with a suffix, states a cause: because the mountains are deep. It is the same construction and the same opening as the third poem, by Princess Shokushi, so that the anthology's opening is heard again here.
The word in the second line means the light of the moon. Even now that spring has come, the poem says, that light is cold.
The third line names the subject outright and comes to a stop.
The verb in the fourth line means to cloud over entirely, formed with the same prefix as the verb opening the fourth poem, and it shows the whole sky closing in.
The poem ends on a continuative particle rather than a full stop. Within five lines the sky that held the moon clouds over and shuts down into snow, so that a stretch of time is taken in. Where the previous poem froze a single scene, this one follows the change itself.
- Author
- Echizen
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Which of them, I ask shall I take to be blossom in the old village on the wide plain of Kasuga where snow has not yet melted
- The sky even now will not haze over at all the wind bites and stings clouded with the threat of snow the moon on a night of spring
- At Mishima Bay the frost is not yet dried off the blades of the reeds and yet enough to bud them the wind of spring has begun
- Under evening moon the tide must be coming in for at Naniwa over the young leaves of reed the white waves are breaking through