木の下の苔の緑も見えぬまで
八重散り敷ける山桜かな
八重散り敷ける山桜かな
- Roma-ji
-
Ko no shita no koke no midori mo mienu made yae chirishikeru yamazakura kana
- English Translation
-
Under the branches
until the green of the moss
is lost from my sight
they have fallen and lie deep
the mountain cherry blossoms
- Meaning
- The mountain cherries have fallen and lie in layers under the trees, until the green of the moss can no longer be seen.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 123
Headnote: a poem on blossom, among a hundred poems presented in the reign of Emperor Horikawa.
Using the same phrase of degree as the previous poem, this one measures the depth of the fallen petals. Where that poem showed blossom filling the air, this shows it heaped on the ground, so that the two answer each other from above and below. The headnote assigns it to the Horikawa sequences, from which the tenth and nineteenth poems of Book One also come.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Moroyori (1068-1139), a son of Minamoto no Toshifusa, who rose to Major Counsellor.
The time is when the cherries fall; the place is beneath the trees.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred poems.
The first two lines name the moss growing under the trees. Yoshitsune's sixty-sixth poem in Book One gave a moss-green that no dyeing could change; here that green is buried under petals.
The third line repeats the previous poem's phrase of degree, so that the two share a construction.
The fourth line means fallen in many layers and spread over the ground, with a perfect auxiliary in the attributive form.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle, the same ending as the hundred and third poem.
The previous poem took the blossom in the act of falling and this one takes it after the fall, so that between them the two hold the whole event.
- Author
- Minamoto no Moroyori
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Of all times, just now even the geese of the fields must take their leave here when the blossom is falling in the Yoshino village
- The hills are so deep that the stands of cedar there are lost from my sight in the wind off the summit the flowers are scattering
- If the summit's bloom did not come falling this far down to the foothills I would take them for trailing cloud, and pass them by unseen
- Once the flowers fall those who came grow rare, until no one comes at all and all that is left to hear is the wind I used to hate