Tare mo yomo mada kikisomeji uguisu no kimi ni nomi koso oto shi hajimure - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

誰もよもまだ聞きそめじ鶯の
君にのみこそ音しはじむれ

Roma-ji: Tare mo yomo mada kikisomeji uguisu no kimi ni nomi koso oto shi hajimure
English Translation: Surely no one yet
has begun to hear the song
of the warbler—
to you, and to you alone,
it first lifts up its voice
Meaning: Surely no one yet has begun to hear the warbler's song; to you alone it first lifts its voice.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 869

Headnote: "Sent around the first day of the first month to a place where I visited in secret"
This poem was sent at the start of the New Year to a woman he visited in secret. Surely no one has yet begun to hear it, he says; this warbler first sings to you alone. Overlaying the first song of the warbler in early spring with his own confession of love, he tells her that he reveals his love to no one but her. Matching the season of the New Year, it expresses love entrusted to the warbler's first song.
The author, "Emperor Nijō," was the eldest son of Emperor Go-Shirakawa and became the seventy-eighth sovereign. He loved poetry and held poetry gatherings in the palace during his reign, but died young.
The next poem, 870, is the reply to this one, and the two form an exchange. Where this poem says the warbler lets only her hear its first song, the reply turns it back, saying the warblers must all have grown used to the capital, answering with the same word, "warbler."

First line, "tare mo yomo": "yomo," together with the negative conjecture "ji" below, means "surely ... not."
Second line, "mada kikisomeji": "kikisomu" means to begin hearing, and "ji" is an auxiliary of negative conjecture, "surely no one has begun to hear it yet." The poem pauses here.
Third line, "uguisu no": the subject of the lines below, the warbler's first song of the New Year. It answers "uguisu wa" in the first line of the next poem, 870.
Fourth line, "kimi ni nomi koso": "nomi" is restrictive and "koso" an emphatic particle that binds with the perfective "hajimure" in the last line.
Fifth line, "oto shi hajimure": "begins to raise its voice," that is, begins to sing, in the perfective as the conclusion of "koso." It closes by entrusting his confession of love to the warbler's first song: "to you alone it begins to sing."
Author: Retired Emperor Nijō
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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