梅が枝に凍れる霜や解けぬらむ
干しあへぬ露の花にこぼれる
干しあへぬ露の花にこぼれる
- Roma-ji
-
Umegae ni kooreru shimo ya tokenuramu hoshiaenu tsuyu no hana ni koboreru
- English Translation
-
On the plum's branches,
has the frost that lay frozen
melted now, I wonder?
Dew that has not yet dried
is spilling on the blossoms.
- Meaning
- Has the frost that froze on the plum branches melted? Dew not yet dried is spilling over the blossoms.
- Commentary
-
Spring Poems 22
Headnote: "Composed on plum blossoms"
Seeing dew spilling over the plum blossoms, the poet wonders whether the frost frozen on the branches has melted. In the change from frost to dew he finely captures the feel of an early-spring morning as the cold loosens.
The Ruijū and Teika texts read the last line hana ni koboruru. The fourth line's tsuyu no ("dew") reads shimo no ("frost") in the Jōkyō text, but the editor corrected it on the basis of the Ruijū and Teika texts, and that correction is followed here.
Line 1, "On the plum's branches," opens the group of plum poems that follows.
Line 2: ru, the attributive of the resultative ri, means frost that had frozen; ya is an interrogative particle.
Line 3: ramu concludes the ya construction, conjecturing that the frost has melted, and the poem pauses here.
Line 4: aenu means unable to finish, here dew not yet dried.
Line 5 gives the scene before the poet's eyes, dew spilling on the flowers, which grounds the conjecture. Echoing the sound of kooreru in line 2, it contrasts frozen frost with spilling dew.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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