をりからやあはれも知らむ梅の花
ただ香ばかりに移りしもせじ
ただ香ばかりに移りしもせじ
- Roma-ji
-
Orikara ya aware mo shiramu ume no hana
tada ka bakari ni utsuri shi mo seji - English Translation
-
It is the season
that makes you feel it so much
the plum blossom's scent
and nothing more than the scent
would not have drawn you like this
- Meaning
- It is the season that makes you feel it so; the plum's scent and nothing more would never have drawn you like this.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Takekawa
A woman behind the blind answered the Lieutenant with this as he sighed and made to leave. The next morning a letter came from Kaoru to the Fujiwara Chamberlain, and the exchange of poems went on elsewhere.
The plum blossom is Kaoru, taken straight from the other poem's "flower." "Ka bakari," only the scent, also reads as "kabakari," as much as this, so that she says no mere fragrance could move hearts so far. It is the season, not the scent itself, that has them all in thrall. Turned around, it tells him that his own season may yet come, and so it makes light of his despair and encourages him at once, in the tactful manner of a gentlewoman.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- From outside perhaps you have settled that I am a stripped and bare tree though it keeps its scent beneath first blossom of the plum tree
- They have all of them turned their hearts toward the flower while I alone stray lost in the darkness that falls upon a night of springtime
- In the one measure of Takekawa I sang there at the bridge end did you come to know how deep the bottom of my heart lies
- At Takekawa you hurried lest the night grow deep about us there and what manner of feeling did you leave behind you then