If the towing rope
in the hand had wavered from
a heart that felt it,
would you have passed on by these
waves on the shore of Suma

Meaning

If the rope in your hands really wavered from a feeling heart, would you have gone past the waves of Suma at all?

Commentary

Part One: Suma

　Genji answered her with this poem, turning it aside lightly: a heart that truly felt it would not have gone by. The smile with which he read her letter was beautiful enough to make one shy. At the foot he added that he had not thought to go fishing here. The narrator closes by saying that the wish to stay was stronger in her than in the man of the old story who left a poem with a post-station master.

　"Kokoro arite" is having the feeling to understand, taking up her "wavering heart." "The rope in the hand" returns her "towing rope." "If it wavered" is a condition. "Would you have passed by?" is a rhetorical question. Using the rope imagery she set up, he tests her words against the facts—a neatly finished piece of repartee.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

If the towing rope in the hand had wavered from a heart that felt it, would you have passed on by these waves on the shore of Suma

If the towing rope
in the hand had wavered from
a heart that felt it,
would you have passed on by these
waves on the shore of Suma