浦風にふきあげの浜の浜千鳥
波立ち来らし夜半に鳴くなり
波立ち来らし夜半に鳴くなり
- Roma-ji
-
Urakaze ni fukiage no hama no hamachidori nami tachikurashi yowa ni naku nari
- English Translation
-
In the wind off the bay
on the beach of Fukiage
the beach plovers—
the waves must be rising in,
for they cry at midnight
- Meaning
- On the beach of Fukiage, where the wind off the bay blows the sand high, the plovers are crying at midnight—the waves must be rising and rolling in.
- Commentary
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Book Six Winter Poems 646
Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence to Retired Emperor Horikawa."
This is the sixth poem of the plover sequence. Hearing the beach plovers of Fukiage cry at midnight in the wind off the bay, the speaker infers that the waves must be rising and rolling in. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented to Emperor Horikawa.
The author, "Kii of the Household of Princess Yūshi," was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Yūshi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Suzaku, and her mother was Koben, who also served in that household. As her personal name is not recorded, the designation in the original is used.
The scene is midnight, and the place is the beach of Fukiage in Kii Province.
The direct occasion is the hundred-poem sequence presented to Emperor Horikawa, known as the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences.
The first line, "urakaze ni," means "in the wind blowing along the shore."
The second line, "fukiage no hama no," names a poetic place in Kii Province, a beach near the mouth of the Kino River in present-day Wakayama City. "Fukiage" carries both the wind "blowing up" and the place name Fukiage.
The third line, "hamachidori," refers to plovers of the beach, the same word as the third line of 644 in this book.
The fourth line, "nami tachikurashi," means "the waves must be rising in," with "rashi" as an auxiliary inferring from evidence.
In the last line, "yowa ni naku nari," "nari" is an auxiliary that infers from sound. Taking the plovers' midnight cries as evidence, the poem infers that waves are rising on the unseen beach, catching by ear the plovers crying as the waves drive them. Where the preceding poem sang of plovers crossing a calm evening sea, this poem sings of plovers on a beach at midnight with wind and rising waves, pairing calm with wind and evening with midnight. The next poem, 647, also sings of the plovers of Fukiage.
- Author
- The Lady Kii of Princess Yushi's Household
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Over the white waves wing brushing wing they fly, the plovers of the beach; the cry that sounds most sorrowful is the single cry at night
- In the evening calm plovers crossing the strait have vanished into the clouds above the islet seen between the waves
- The moon shines clear— yet who would come here to see? In the land of Kii a plover of Fukiage is crying all alone
- Plovers of the night— their cries are drawing nearer on Narumi's flats; beneath the sinking moon is the tide now coming in?