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

Meaning

It is the damming that will show how shallow it is, like a mountain stream—if the name that flows on cannot be kept covered.

Commentary

Part Two: Yugiri

　Getting no answer, Yugiri wrote to Ono again. Refuse as she may, he says, the talk has begun, and refusing will only make what is between them look slight. The letter never reached the Princess; her mother, the Ichijo lady, saw it from her sickbed. Wanting to know what he really intended, she took up the brush herself, ill as she was, and wrote back.

　"Damming" is stopping water, and from there refusing a suit. "Shallowness" is both a stream's and a heart's. "Mountain stream" belongs with damming, shallowness, and flowing as associated words. "The name that flows downstream" is a reputation carried on into the future, with flowing again from the stream. Water runs through the whole while he argues that resisting only cheapens the bond—the same reasoning he has used from the first.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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

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