磯馴れぬ心ぞ堪へぬ旅寝する
芦の丸屋にかかる白波
芦の丸屋にかかる白波
- Roma-ji
-
Iso narenu kokoro zo taenu tabine suru ashi no maroya ni kakaru shiranami
- English Translation
-
Unused to the shore,
my heart cannot bear it so,
sleeping on my way
in a hut thatched with the reeds,
as the white waves break against it.
- Meaning
- My heart, unused to the shore, cannot bear it: the white waves breaking over the reed-thatched hut where I sleep on my journey.
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 926
Headnote: "Composed on the topic 'Lodging on a journey by the water.'"
This is the seventh of a sequence of poems on the loneliness of sleeping on a journey. A heart unused to the shore cannot bear the white waves breaking over the reed hut where the traveler sleeps, the unease of lodging by the water. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Lodging on a journey by the water."
The author, Minamoto no Morokata, was an official and poet of the mid-Heian period. "Ason" is an honorific added to the names of those of the fourth or fifth rank.
The scene is a night of lodging by the water, in a reed-thatched hut where waves come breaking in.
The direct occasion is composing on the topic "Lodging on a journey by the water."
The first line, "iso narenu," means "unused to the shore." It shows the speaker as a traveler, not one who lives by the sea.
The second line, "kokoro zo taenu," means "my heart cannot bear it." The particle "zo" is answered by the negative "nu" in the attributive form, and the poem breaks after this second line. By inversion, what cannot be borne is placed in the lower verse.
The third line, "tabine suru," means "where I sleep on my journey." The next poem begins with the same words, "tabine suru."
The fourth line, "ashi no maroya ni," means "in the reed-thatched hut." It shares its words with "ashi no maroya no," the second line of the next poem, setting the two side by side as poems of sleeping in a reed hut. As with the lodging "ashi no ha o karifuku" in 922, a reed-thatched hut becomes the traveler's shelter.
The last line, "kakaru shiranami," means "the white waves breaking over it." Ending on a noun, it names last what cannot be borne. Where 916 delights in sleeping on a boat even if the waves break one's dreams, this poem tells of a heart unable to bear the waves breaking over the hut, setting two contrasting nights by the water side by side.
- Author
- Minamoto no Morokata
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On the mountain road I find I am drenched right through; where the white dew lies, rising at dawn, I have walked through the drops falling from the trees.
- Pillowed on the grass, you who sleep upon your way, take heed of the hour; even the moon of daybreak has sunk low now in the sky.
- Sleeping on my way, in a hut thatched with the reeds the cold is bitter, and the boats with brushwood cut are hurrying, I can hear.
- On the mountain road did he set out just this morning, that traveler there? His hat has turned snowy white as the snow keeps piling on.