Koma tomete nao mizu kawamu yamabuki no hana no tsuyu sou Ide no Tamagawa

English Translation

I halt my horse here
to water it once again
where the kerria
lets its dew fall on the stream
the Tamagawa at Ide

Meaning

I stop my horse to let it drink once more at the Tamagawa at Ide, where the dew of the kerria falls into the water.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 159

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The second poem in the run on kerria. A traveller stopping to water his horse is set among the dew of the flowers. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Shunzei; this is his third appearance in this book, after the hundredth and hundred and fourteenth poems.
The time is the end of spring; the place is the Tamagawa at Ide in Yamashiro Province, in what is now Ide in Kyoto Prefecture. Ide was the site of Tachibana no Moroe's villa and had long been written of for its kerria and its frogs.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The first line means to halt one's horse, and in a word tells us that the poem is set on a journey.
The verb in the second line means to water a horse; the adverb before it means once again, further, and gives the reluctance to move on. The auxiliary expresses intention.
The third and fourth lines have the dew of the kerria falling into the water. It is not plain water but water carrying the flowers' dew, and that is the reason offered for stopping again: the reluctance to leave is put on the horse.
The poem closes on a noun. Rivers of that name are found in several provinces, and this is the one at Ide; placing the name last fixes the scene.
The previous poem set kerria along the Yoshino River, and this one takes the same pairing of flower and water in another place.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other