寄る波の心も知らでわかの浦に
玉藻なびかむほどぞ浮きたる
玉藻なびかむほどぞ浮きたる
- Roma-ji
-
Yoru nami no kokoro mo shirade Waka no ura ni
tamamo nabikamu hodo zo ukitaru - English Translation
-
Not knowing the heart
of the wave that comes to shore,
for the jeweled weed
at Waka bay to bend down
would be a light thing indeed
- Meaning
- For the jeweled weed of Waka bay to bend without knowing the heart of the wave that reaches it would be a light thing indeed.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
The nurse Shonagon answered Genji's poem with this one, refusing outright: she cannot give up so young a girl to a man whose real intentions are unknown. Genji saw that she would not be easily moved. But a few days later, hearing that the girl's father meant to take her into his own house, he carried her off on the night before.
"Waka bay" is a poetic place-name in Kii, and taking up his "Ashiwaka bay" it also sounds "waka," poetry. "Jeweled weed" is fine seaweed, here the girl. "Nabiku" plays the weed swaying in water against a woman yielding to a man, and "floating" plays being on the water against being frivolous. The reply works its coastal associations through the whole poem, and is a highly finished piece of technique.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- When shall I pluck it with my own hand and behold this young field grass here that runs down in its roots to the purple gromwell's own root
- At Ashiwaka bay the seaweed is hard to find and hard to see, am I a wave that stands here and turns back with nothing gained
- At the break of dawn, lost though I am in a sky where the mist is thick, here is the gate of the one I love, hard to pass on by
- If you stand and find this fence of mist hard to pass and go by our gate, then a bolt made of grasses would be no hindrance to you