常世出でて旅の空なる雁がねも
列に遅れぬほどぞ慰む
列に遅れぬほどぞ慰む
- Roma-ji
-
Tokoyo idete tabi no sora naru kari ga ne mo
tsura ni okurenu hodo zo nagusamu - English Translation
-
Even the wild geese
that have left the eternal
land for strange sky here
take some comfort while they keep
from falling out of the line
- Meaning
- Even geese that have left the eternal land for a traveller's sky take comfort so long as they do not fall out of the line.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suma
The former Lieutenant of the Right followed with this poem. He was the man who had declined to go with his father to his post in Hitachi and joined Genji's retinue instead. He seems to have had his own private misgivings, but he carried himself proudly and went about his work as though nothing troubled him. He added that he did not know what it would be like to lose one's companions.
"Tokoyo" takes up the previous poem's word, showing that all four share the same image. "The traveller's sky" carries over from Genji's poem. "Not falling behind the line" is staying with one's fellows, that is, staying with his lord. That the only comfort is in not being alone states the solidarity of the retainers exactly, and makes a fitting close to the four.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Ranged in a line, they bring back to me the way things were in former days, though the geese were never friends of ours in that time at all
- The geese that of their own will left the eternal land and cry as they go—how far off, like clouds, I used to think them from myself
- While I look at it I am comforted a while, though the moon's city, where I shall meet them again, lies far off from here indeed
- It is not simply as a wretched thing alone that I feel all this— and so my sleeves are wet on the one side and the other