When purple’s hue
is deep in its season,
so it seems to me—
all the grasses of the fields
have not withered away.
- Meaning
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When the color of the purple root is deep and rich, the grasses and trees of the fields all appear as one, none seeming to have withered away.
- Commentary
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Episode Forty-One: "Purple"
There were two sisters. One married a man of low rank and poverty; the other married a man of high rank.
The woman who married the poor man washed and starched her husband’s robe at the end of the twelfth month. Unaccustomed to such work, she tore the shoulder and could do nothing but weep.
Hearing of this, the nobleman took pity on her and sent a fine green robe of the kind worn by a man of the Sixth Rank.
This poem was attached to the robe.
Just as when the purple root is green all the grasses of the field seem to take on its hue, so when one cherishes his wife, those connected with her as well become dear without distinction.
The text notes that this feeling is the same as that expressed in the anonymous poem in the Kokinshū: "Because of a single purple plant, all the grasses of Musashino I behold with tenderness."
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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How deeply moving,
the weeping that I now hear—
though the torches die,
that things should vanish and be gone,
that I do not truly know.
-
If she should go forth,
who then would find parting hard?
but beyond all past,
today’s grief surpasses all—
how sorrowful this day is.
-
Since I went forth,
even the traces I left
have not yet altered—
whose passing path, I wonder,
has it now come to be?
-
Cuckoo—since there are
so many villages where
you go on singing,
still, though I think of you,
I cannot hold you dear.