Shimete koso chitose no haru wa kitsutsu mime matsu o tetayuku nani ka hiku beki - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

しめてこそ千歳の春は来つつ見め
松を手たゆく何か引くべき

Roma-ji: Shimete koso chitose no haru wa kitsutsu mime matsu o tetayuku nani ka hiku beki
English Translation: Marking it as mine,
for a thousand springs I'll come
time and again to see;
why should I tire out my hands
pulling up the little pine?
Meaning: Only by marking it as my own will I come to see it every spring for a thousand years; why should I tire my hands pulling up the pine?
Commentary: Book Sixteen Miscellaneous Spring Poems 1024

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poet says that rather than pull up the pine, one should mark it as one's own and come to see it every spring for a thousand years. Against the custom of pulling young pines on the Day of the Rat, it celebrates the pine's long life by preferring to leave it growing and keep looking at it each spring for a thousand years. Where the preceding poem, 1023, saw a thousand years in a young pine pulled up to look at, this poem resolves to keep seeing the thousand years without pulling it, and the two form a pair.

First line, "shimete koso," means "only by marking it as mine," with the binding particle "koso" resolved by the perfective form "me" in the third line.
Second line, "chitose no haru wa," means "the springs of a thousand years," sharing the pine's long life with the final line of the preceding poem, 1023, "chiyo ni ka aru ran," and the second line of the next poem, 1025, "matsu no chitose mo."
Third line, "kitsutsu mime," means "I will come again and again to see it," with "tsutsu" expressing repetition and "me" the perfective form of the auxiliary of intention "mu." The poem breaks after this third line.
Fourth line, "matsu o tetayuku," means "the pine, till my hands grow weary."
Final line, "nani ka hiku beki," means "why should I pull it," with "ka" rhetorical. Against the first line of the preceding poem, "hikite miru," it ends by declining to pull.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Shui Wakashu
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