Neither team have any comments to make about the other’s poem.
Shunzei remarks that the opening of the Left’s poem seems ‘old-fashioned’ (and hence is cliched). The conclusion is splendid, but would have been improve by the substitution of ‘crags’ (iwa) for ‘rocks’ (ishi). The Right’s poem, in the spirit of clarifying the numbers of waves of water flowing under a thin sheet of ice, ‘seems exceptional’, and so the latter poem is ‘slightly superior.’
The Right team here disapprove of the Left’s use of shimikōru, calling it, ‘grating on the ear’ – Shunzei disagrees, saying that neither component, shimi or kōru, is ‘vulgar’. Both poems, he feels, start well, and the fourth line of the Right poem, kasumi mo sayuru, is particularly fine, but, once again, the round must be adjudged a tie.
morobito no
tachi’iru niwa no
sakazuki ni
hikari mo shirushi
chiyo no hatsuharu
Where the courtier crowds
Sit and stand within the gardens,
Upon the wine cups
Light is e’en a sign, of
A thousand generations, at the start of spring.
Neither team finds any fault in the other’s poem this round.
Shunzei’s judgement: The conception [kokoro] of the Left’s ‘Announce! For a thousand generations the signs are placed’ (nobeyo to chiyo no shirushi zo oku) is fine [yoroshiku haberubeshi]. The configuration of the Right’s poem, too, is splendid [sugata wa yū ni haberu], but ‘wine cups’ (sakazuki) seems rather abrupt. ‘Light’ (hikari) could beimagined as coming from the moon, but its origin is not entirely clear. Thus, as a result, the Left must win.