さむしろの夜半の衣手冴え冴えて
初雪白し岡の辺の松
初雪白し岡の辺の松
- Roma-ji
-
Samushiro no yowa no koromode saesaete hatsuyuki shiroshi oka no be no matsu
- English Translation
-
On the narrow mat,
the sleeves of my robe at midnight
grow colder and colder—
white lies the first snow
on the pines along the hill
- Meaning
- On my narrow mat at midnight, the sleeves of my robe grow colder and colder—and the first snow lies white upon the pines along the hillside.
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 662
Headnote: "From a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the sixth poem of the snow sequence. The sleeves of one sleeping on a narrow mat grow colder and colder at midnight, and the first snow lies white on the pines along the hill. According to the headnote, it is one poem from a hundred-poem sequence.
The author, "Princess Shikishi," is Princess Shikishi. A daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, she served as Kamo Priestess and studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei.
The scene is midnight on a winter night after the first snow, and the place is a dwelling within view of pines along a hill.
The direct occasion is the composition of a hundred-poem sequence. The headnote does not record which hundred-poem sequence it was.
The first line, "samushiro no," means "of the narrow mat," indicating the bed of one who sleeps alone.
The second line, "yowa no koromode," refers to the sleeves at midnight.
The third line, "saesaete," means "growing colder and colder." The repetition of the word shows the deepening of the cold.
The fourth line, "hatsuyuki shiroshi," means "the first snow is white," and the poem breaks after the fourth line. Turning from the chill of the sleeves to look outside, the speaker finds the whiteness of the first snow.
The last line, "oka no be no matsu," closes on a noun, naming the pines along the hill where the first snow lies. Starting from the bodily sensation of cold on the sleeves, the poem reveals its cause, the first snow, as whiteness on evergreen pines, suggesting a contrast of green and white. From first snow piling up in an overgrown garden in the preceding poem, the scene of first snow moves to white on the pines of a hill at midnight.
- Author
- Princess Shokushi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The first snow falls and the sacred cedars of Furu lie buried deep; the fields bound with sacred ropes have shut themselves in for winter
- The longer one lives, the more one's sorrows grow— not knowing such a world, into this ruined garden the first snow falls and settles
- Even this morning, when the snow began to fall, I found myself longing for a visitor— in a deep mountain village the snow at dusk
- Today, I thought, perhaps even you might come to call, and so I gazed out— yet not a footprint marks the snow within my garden