心もて草の宿りを厭へども
なほ鈴虫の声ぞふりせぬ
なほ鈴虫の声ぞふりせぬ
- Roma-ji
-
Kokoro mote kusa no yadori o itoedomo
nao suzumushi no koe zo furisenu - English Translation
-
Of your own accord
you turned away and left this
lodging in the grass,
and still the bell cricket's voice
has not grown old in the least
- Meaning
- Of your own accord you turned away from this lodging in the grass, and still the bell cricket's voice has not grown old at all.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Suzumushi
Genji answered the Third Princess's poem with this one. For one who left the world of her own will, he says, she keeps a good deal of her heart for a cricket's voice—her own words handed back with a light push. At the same time it implies that her voice and her looks are as fine as they ever were. Soon afterward Prince Hyobu and Yugiri arrived, instruments were brought out, and the night at Rokujo turned unexpectedly brilliant.
"Of your own accord" is by one's own will. "This lodging in the grass" is a rough temporary dwelling—the world we live in, and also the grass where the insects are. "Turned away" is to shun, that is, to take vows. "Has not grown old" takes up her "shake off" and keeps the shaking of a bell in play as an associated word. Using the same words and turning their sense is the ordinary business of an exchange, and he does it neatly.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Though you promise us one lotus dwelling with no wall set between, your own heart, I think, will never settle and be clear in it
- Autumn in general I have come to know as a hard thing—and even so, what I cannot shake off is the bell cricket's voice
- Even to a house set far away and apart from above the clouds, it comes and does not forget— this moon of the autumn night
- The light of the moon is to be seen in the same sky as it always was, and it is from my own house that the autumn has altered