庭もせに積もれる雪と見えながら
香るぞ花のしるしなりける
香るぞ花のしるしなりける
- Roma-ji
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Niwa mo se ni tsumoreru yuki to mienagara kaoru zo hana no shirushi narikeru
- English Translation
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Filling the garden
it looks like heaped-up snow,
and yet all the while
it is the fragrance, after all,
that is the token of the flowers.
- Meaning
- It looks like snow piled high across the garden, yet it is the fragrance that shows, after all, that these are flowers.
- Commentary
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Book One Spring Poems 43
The petals carpeting the garden cannot be told from snow by sight, but their fragrance reveals them to be flowers. The charm lies in the shift of senses, mistaken for snow by the eye and known as flowers by the nose.
The author is said to be Minamoto no Arihito, the Hanazono Minister of the Left.
The first line, "filling the garden," means so much that the garden seems too small, showing petals strewn everywhere.
The second line, "heaped-up snow," likens petals to snow, the same image as "a snowfall that will never melt" in 37.
The third line, "it looks, and yet," leads on adversatively: though it appears so.
The fourth line, "it is the fragrance," stresses the scent with "zo."
The last line, "the token of the flowers," closes a kakari-musubi with "zo" and the attributive "keru."
- Source
- Shika Wakashu
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