Drawn as I am toward
a place that is not of this
wretched world, I too
send my thoughts along the road
of the hills I turned toward

Meaning

Drawn as I am to a place that is not of this wretched world, I too send my thoughts along the mountain road of those who have turned away.

Commentary

Part Two: Yokobue

　The Third Princess answered her father's gift and poem with this one. Already a nun, she says she would like to enter the same mountain temple as he. Forced into vows while still young, and with no place to put her heart even at the Rokujo residence, she sets down her state exactly as it is. Afterward Genji came to see her, found the small Kaoru gnawing at the bamboo shoots that had been sent, and spoke a poem of his own.

　"This wretched world" is the secular life. "A place that is not of this world" is paradise, or the temple in the hills, and it takes up her father's "place" unchanged. "Drawn toward" is being pulled by longing. "The road of those who have turned away" is the mountain path of renunciation, again from his own poem. Carrying each of his words forward and saying she would go the same way, she keeps the etiquette of the exchange carefully.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Drawn as I am toward a place that is not of this wretched world, I too send my thoughts along the road of the hills I turned toward

Drawn as I am toward
a place that is not of this
wretched world, I too
send my thoughts along the road
of the hills I turned toward