見ぬ人によそへて見つる梅の花
散りなん後のなぐさめぞなき
散りなん後のなぐさめぞなき
- Roma-ji
-
Minu hito ni yosoete mitsuru ume no hana chirinamu nochi no nagusame zo naki
- English Translation
-
Likening it to
one I have never yet seen
I looked at the plum
and once its flowers have gone
there will be no comfort left
- Meaning
- I have been looking at the plum and taking it for you, whom I have never seen; when the flowers have fallen, there will be nothing left to console me.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 48
Headnote: sent to Daini no Sanmi with plum blossom.
Two poems of exchange follow. This one was sent to a woman together with a branch of plum. The writer says he has been taking the flowers for the person he has not yet met, and complains of what will be left when they fall.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Sadayori (995-1045), a son of Fujiwara no Kinto, who rose to Provisional Middle Counsellor. The recipient, Daini no Sanmi, was Fujiwara no Kataiko, daughter of Murasaki Shikibu; her name comes from her marriage to Takashina no Nariakira, Deputy Governor-General of Dazaifu.
The time is the fall of the plum blossom; no place is given.
The occasion was the sending of plum blossom with a poem attached.
Her reply follows as the forty-ninth poem.
The first line means a person not yet met. Letters were commonly exchanged before any meeting, and the situation is unremarkable in itself.
The verb in the second line means to liken, to see one thing as another; a perfect auxiliary in the attributive form marks it as something he has been doing for a while.
The third line names the object.
The fourth line joins a perfect auxiliary to one of conjecture: after they shall have fallen. The blossom is still on the tree, and the poem is already looking past it.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive form at the close. That there will be no comfort once the flowers go is a way of saying there is no comfort without her. The blossom is a pretext for stating a wish to meet.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Sadayori
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Whose sleeve was it brushed the plum flower, leaving this scent I would like to ask of the moon, and of whether the spring is the old spring still
- The plum's colour and its scent I cannot tire of are as they once were and the moon of a spring night is the same keepsake as then
- Every spring my heart is dyed into the branches of these flowers here and whose careless, idle sleeve is it that has brushed them now
- The wind that scatters the plum, has it too come through and blown across here for this fragrant snow of mine falls in disorder on sleeves