Leading in my train
the young pines of the meadow
where new leaves come out,
I pray today for the rock
that their roots first grew beside

Meaning

Leading with me the young pines of the meadow where new leaves are coming out, today I pray for the rock at their root, that it stand unchanged.

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Jo

　The new year came and Genji turned forty. On the Day of the Rat, the twenty-third of the First Month, his foster daughter Tamakazura came to the Rokujo residence with her two small sons and offered him the new shoots that mark a wish for long life. Genji had once taken her in and raised her, and she was now the wife of Higekuro. Seeing her arrive with children of her own, he could not help feeling how the years had gone. She spoke this poem, and he answered at once. The chapter takes its name from these shoots and from his reply.

　"Where new leaves come out" is the first budding of spring. "The young pines of the meadow" are the pines pulled up on the Day of the Rat, and here they are her two small boys. "The rock" is a rock's foot, an image for what does not move, and it stands for Genji, who brought her up. The pine-pulling and shoot-gathering of the New Year are taken straight into the poem, and the long future of the pines is laid over the fixity of the rock to bless his fortieth year. Gratitude to a foster father is kept neatly inside the form of the occasion.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Leading in my train the young pines of the meadow where new leaves come out, I pray today for the rock that their roots first grew beside

Leading in my train
the young pines of the meadow
where new leaves come out,
I pray today for the rock
that their roots first grew beside