八重匂ふ軒端の桜移ろひぬ
風よりさきに訪ふ人もがな
風よりさきに訪ふ人もがな
- Roma-ji
-
Yae niou nokiba no sakura utsuroinu kaze yori saki ni tou hito mogana
- English Translation
-
In eightfold splendour
the cherry at my eaves' edge
has begun to fade
if only a visitor
would come before the wind does
- Meaning
- The double cherry at my eaves, that bloomed so richly, has begun to fade; if only someone would come before the wind.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 137
Headnote: she had a branch of the double cherry at her house broken off and sent it to Prince Koreakira.
The second exchange of the book. The headnote records that she had a branch of her own double cherry cut and sent to Prince Koreakira; the poem that follows is his reply.
Princess Shokushi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, had served as High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine. This is her second appearance in this book, after the hundred and first poem. Prince Koreakira, the recipient, was the third son of Emperor Takakura and elder brother of Retired Emperor Go-Toba; he is the poet of the thirty-first poem in Book One.
The time is when the double cherries fade; the place is the eaves of her house.
The occasion was the sending of the branch.
The first line means blooming richly in many layers of petals.
The second line names the cherry at the eaves, standing where the plum stood in her fifty-second poem in Book One, in which she asked the tree not to forget her: the same poet addressing a flower at her own eaves once more.
The verb in the third line means to lose colour, with a perfect auxiliary.
The fourth line means before the wind can take them.
The particle at the close expresses a wish: if only someone would come. Echizen's hundred and twenty-seventh poem hoped not to be asked about the flowers; this one hopes to be visited, taking the same situation the other way. The sending of the branch is itself the request.
- Author
- Princess Shokushi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Today, at the least the flowers at their height fall across the garden though they will not melt away look on them and call them snow
- Was it left behind for the one who was not asked that it lingers still the white snow of the blossom kept back from tomorrow's fall
- How hard you are, then to have let the eightfold bloom fade before you spoke a heart that would visit it but pass by and say nothing
- Was the cherry bloom a dream, or was it waking and the white clouds gone and nothing on earth abides in the spring wind on the peak