藤衣露けき秋の山人は
鹿の鳴く音に音をぞ添へつる
鹿の鳴く音に音をぞ添へつる
- Roma-ji
-
Fujigoromo tsuyukeki aki no yamabito wa
shika no naku ne ni ne o zo soetsuru - English Translation
-
The mountain dwellers,
whose mourning robes are heavy
with the autumn dew,
have added a voice of their
own to the crying of deer
- Meaning
- The mountain dwellers, their mourning robes heavy with autumn dew, have added their own voices to the crying of the deer.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Yugiri
Shosho no Kimi answered Yugiri's poem with this one. Those in the villa are in mourning too, she says, and pass their days adding their weeping to the deer—taking up what he had said while conveying how deep the Princess's grief runs. The Princess still would not write, and Yugiri came down from the hills without so much as a glimpse of her. On the way he passed the Ichijo residence, looked at the neglected house, and composed a poem of his own.
"Mourning robes" are the coarse cloth worn in bereavement. "Heavy with dew" is being wet, and so given to tears. "Mountain dwellers" are the people at the Ono villa, and above all the Princess. "Added a voice" is joining one's weeping to another sound, the word covering both the deer's cry and human sobbing. She takes his deer unchanged and lays their voices over it—a careful reply, properly measured for one writing on another's behalf.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Which of them should I single out and dwell upon? In a world where dew that vanishes and forms again is not on grass blades alone
- The village being far, I have parted my way through Ono's bamboo grass, and I too, like the deer, do not spare my voice at all
- In the pond water where the one I used to see no longer stands clear, keeping the house all alone— the moon of an autumn night
- When am I to come and wake you? For that one word you spoke, that it be when the dream of a night that never ends has broken off