秋風にしばしとまらぬ露の世を
誰れか草葉のうへとのみ見む
誰れか草葉のうへとのみ見む
- Roma-ji
-
Akikaze ni shibashi tomaranu tsuyu no yo o
tare ka kusaba no ue to nomi mimu - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- In a world of dew that will not stay a moment in the autumn wind, who could take it for a thing of the grass blades alone?
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Minori
After Murasaki no Ue's poem and Genji's, the Akashi Empress closed the set with this one. The frailty of dew, she says, is not confined to the grass; it is the same for everyone—a gentle attempt to comfort the woman who had raised her. The three of them made so fine a sight that Genji wished they might go on like this for a thousand years, though a life is not in anyone's keeping. Soon Murasaki had the curtain drawn to and lay down, and with the Empress holding her hand she died at daybreak.
"Autumn wind" is the wind that scatters the dew. "Will not stay a moment" is how briefly it holds. "A world of dew" is the phrase carried over from the two poems before. "A thing of the grass blades alone" is limited by the particle so that the line becomes a question with only one answer. Where the first two poems spoke of one life, this one opens impermanence out to everyone, which is what the last poem of a set should do.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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
- 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
- The autumn evening of long ago is what I long for, and what showed itself as the end was a dream in the dark before dawn
- Even the autumn of long ago feels to me like the present hour, and on sleeves already wet the dew comes settling again