夕まぐれほのかに花の色を見て
今朝は霞の立ちぞわづらふ
今朝は霞の立ちぞわづらふ
- Roma-ji
-
Yūmagure honoka ni hana no iro o mite
kesa wa kasumi no tachi zo wazurau - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Having glimpsed that flower's color faintly in the dusk, I find this morning that the rising mist makes it hard to set out.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
Before leaving the hills, Genji sent this poem to the nun through the bishop. Drawing on the glimpse of the girl the evening before, he says he cannot bear simply to go. His offer to take the child had already been turned down, but he had not given it up. The nun answered this poem too, deflecting him gently.
"Yumagure" is the hour of dusk, when he looked in over the fence. "The color of the flower" figures the girl's beauty and joins with the mountain-cherry imagery. "The mist rising" is the haze of spring, and "rising" also plays against setting out, so that the mist is what keeps him from leaving. Tying scene and feeling with a single double-sense word is the classic shape of a poem in exchange.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- Is it truly so, that where the flower stands you find it hard to leave? I shall watch the look of that sky where the mist is rising
- That face does not leave this body of mine at all— the mountain cherry, though with all the heart I had I left my heart there with it