優曇華の花待ち得たる心地して
深山桜に目こそ移らね
深山桜に目こそ移らね
- Roma-ji
-
Udonge no hana machietaru kokochi shite
miyamazakura ni me koso utsurane - English Translation
-
It is as though I
had waited and met at last
the udumbara—
and my eyes will not shift now
to the cherry of deep hills
- Meaning
- It is as if I had waited and at last been granted the udumbara flower; my eyes will not turn even to the cherries of these deep hills.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
At the parting, the bishop answered Genji's poem with this one. Genji's visit itself, he says, is like meeting the flower that blooms once in three thousand years, so that mountain cherries are nothing beside it—praise of the guest in the highest terms available. Genji laughed and went down from the hills. The episode there closes, and the tale moves back to the capital.
The udumbara is a legendary flower said to bloom once in three thousand years, used for a piece of great and rare fortune. He takes Genji's "mountain cherry" and returns it as "cherry of the deep hills," carrying the exchange's words forward. Where Genji praised the blossom, the bishop answers that his guest surpasses it, using a term drawn from Buddhist scripture to make a greeting of the highest formality.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- At this mountain stream that has of a sudden made your sleeve wet with tears, would a heart that dwells here clear be stirred and troubled at all
- I will go and tell the people of the palace of this hill cherry, so that they may come and look before the wind gets here first
- Opening rarely the pine door of this deep hill where I keep shut in, I have looked upon the face of a flower never seen
- In the dusk I saw faintly the color of one flower, and this morn the mist that rises makes it hard for me to rise and go