Te o hidete samusa mo shiranu izumi ni zo kumu to wa nashi ni higoro henikeru - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

手をひでゝ寒さも知らぬ泉にぞ
汲むとはなしに日ごろ經にける

Roma-ji: Te o hidete samusa mo shiranu izumi ni zo kumu to wa nashi ni higoro henikeru
English Translation: Never dipping hands
to feel the chill of its spring,
here at Izumi,
not to draw its water, yet
I have passed day after day
Meaning: Here at Izumi—the spring whose chill my hands have never felt—I have spent day after day without drawing any water at all.
Commentary: 43 The Fourth Day of the Second Month: The Shells of Forgetting

On the fourth day of the second month, the steersman declared that the look of the wind and clouds was very bad that day, so the boat did not sail. Yet all day long neither waves nor wind arose. The diarist writes that this steersman was a fool who could not even read the weather. On the beach of this anchorage there were many lovely shells and stones of every kind. And so the people on the boat could think of nothing but longing for the one who was gone.
The one who was gone was the former governor's daughter, who had died in Tosa. "Wasuregai," the shell of forgetting, was a shell said to make one forget one's longing if one picked it up.
Lamenting the days still being spent in the same place, a certain woman composed this poem.
The diary records no response. The next day, the fifth, the party at last set out from Izumi-no-nada toward the anchorage of Otsu.

In the first line, "Te o hidete," "hizu" means to soak in water: dipping one's hands in water. The second line, "samusa mo shiranu," means "not knowing its chill," that is, never actually dipping one's hands at all. In the third line, "izumi ni zo," "izumi" is a pivot word for both a spring of water and the province of Izumi. "Zo" is an emphatic particle.
The fourth line, "kumu to wa nashi ni," means "without drawing water." The final line, "higoro henikeru," means "I have passed many days," answering "zo" with the attributive form "keru" in a kakari-musubi construction.
One would feel the chill of a spring by dipping one's hands into it, yet the speaker draws no water and simply passes day after day in the province of Izumi: the poem sings the frustration of being held back. It is a witty poem that makes use of the natural link between "spring" and "drawing water."
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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