My heart, in its wish
to be quit of the world, goes
to your hills—and yet
is it you who set between
clouds that rise in eightfold ranks
- Meaning
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My wish to be quit of the world goes out to your hills; is it you, then, who set eightfold clouds between us?
- Commentary
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Part Three: Hashihime
Word of how deeply the Eighth Prince had given himself to religion reached the capital, and the Retired Emperor Reizei sent him a letter with this poem. He too had wished to leave the world and had not been able to, and the poem carries both his fellow feeling for the prince shut away at Uji and a reproach for how seldom word comes from him. The prince answered, and the thin thread joining the capital to Uji is shown.
To be quit of the world is the set phrase for the wish to take vows. "The hills" are the hills of Uji where the prince lives. The clouds standing in eightfold ranks are the distance between capital and mountain village, and at the same time hint at a suspicion that it is the prince who has closed himself off. That the poem comes from a retired sovereign shows that the forgotten prince still keeps some noble connection.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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Weeping as you did,
had you not spread out your wings
over us, my lord,
I would have stayed in the nest,
an egg that never was hatched
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The one I once knew
and the house are turned to smoke,
and yet, for what cause,
has this body of mine stayed
unconsumed and lingered on
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No visitors come,
though it is not that my heart
has grown clear at all—
I have found this Uji hill
bitter, and borrowed a room
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More easily than
the dew on leaves that give way
to the mountain wind,
and for no cause I can name,
these tears of mine break and fall