分け行かむ草葉の露をかことにて
なほ濡衣をかけむとや思ふ
なほ濡衣をかけむとや思ふ
- Roma-ji
-
Wakeyukamu kusaba no tsuyu o kagoto nite
nao nureginu o kakemu to ya omou - English Translation
-
Making a pretext
of the dew on the grass blades
you must part to go,
do you mean even so to
lay a wet robe upon me
- Meaning
- Making a pretext of the dew on the grass you must part to go, do you mean even so to lay false blame upon me?
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Yugiri
The Fallen Leaf Princess answered Yugiri's poem with this one. He is using a wet road home, she says outright, to let the world believe in a bond that does not exist. Her guard was well placed: the priest did see him leaving at dawn, and word reached her mother. Ill as she was, the Ichijo lady wrote to Yugiri, and immediately afterward her condition took a sudden turn.
"Part to go" takes up his own "part my way out." "Dew on the grass blades" takes up his dew. "Pretext" is a made-up excuse. "Lay a wet robe" continues the phrase from the exchange before, holding together being wet and being saddled with a rumor one has not earned. She receives every one of his words and then names his intention exactly—among the sharpest poems she gives him.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Even if I do not lay a wet robe of blame upon you, can the name of sleeves already rotted through be hidden any more
- Soaked through and through by the dew at the eaves of this field of reeds, I must go parting my way out through mists that stand eightfold deep
- Having left my soul behind at your unfeeling sleeve, I find that I am lost, and it is my own heart that has bewildered me
- It is in the damming that the shallowness will show, like a mountain stream— if the name that flows downstream cannot be kept wrapped up now