おくと見るほどぞはかなきともすれば
風に乱るる萩のうは露
風に乱るる萩のうは露
- Roma-ji
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Oku to miru hodo zo hakanaki tomo sureba
kaze ni midaruru hagi no uwatsuyu - English Translation
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The while it is seen
to settle there at all is
brief—for at a breath
it is scattered by the wind,
this dew on the bush clover
- Meaning
- The while it is seen to settle there at all is brief; at a breath the wind scatters it—this dew on the bush clover.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Minori
Murasaki no Ue grew steadily worse after the summer, and the Akashi Empress came down from the palace to the Nijo residence to be with the woman who had raised her. On a windy autumn evening Murasaki, feeling a little better, leaned against her armrest and looked out at the garden. Genji was overjoyed simply to see her sitting up, and watching him she was struck by the thought of what would become of him. She spoke this poem then. Genji and the Empress each added one, so that the three of them sang together. Almost at once she failed, and at dawn she died.
"Settle" is dew coming to rest, and the verb also sounds the word for rising, so that it means her own sitting up as well. "Brief" is what is gone in a moment. "At a breath" is at the slightest thing. "Dew on the bush clover" is what lies on the leaves, and it is her own life. Taking the garden in front of her straight into herself, she says the end of a life in one image of dew scattering, and the poem is among the best known in the tale.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Though this is the Law that must now come to its end, still I find in it something to trust—this bond we tie for lives upon lives
- The bond we have tied between us will not be cut, even if for me the rites that remain to hold are few enough in number
- In a dewdrop world where at a breath they vie with one another to go, let no time at all pass between the one who stays and the one who goes
- In a world of dew that will not stay a moment in the autumn wind, who could see it as a thing of the grass blades alone