かざし折る花のたよりに山賤の
垣根を過ぎぬ春の旅人
垣根を過ぎぬ春の旅人
- Roma-ji
-
Kazashi oru hana no tayori ni yamagatsu no
kakine o suginu haru no tabibito - English Translation
-
One who breaks a spray
to wear it, and in passing
goes by the rough hedge
of a mountain rustic's house—
just a traveller of spring
- Meaning
- One who breaks a spray to wear and passes by a mountain rustic's hedge is only a traveller of spring.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
Naka no Kimi's reply to Niou's poem on the mountain cherry. Oigimi was unwilling to answer, and the younger sister wrote in her place; from this point the replies to Niou are hers. She turns aside the kinship he had claimed, treating him as a passer-by amusing himself on the road.
Hana no tayori is doing a thing while about something else. The rustic's hedge is a poor house in the hills, said of her own condition in self-deprecation. The traveller of spring is one who goes by and does not stop, and holds him lightly off. The skill with which she takes his kazashi and shifts its sense shows both the learning of the Uji sisters and their wariness of men from the capital.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Though waves lie between the near shore and the far shore, still, I ask of you, blow across and back again, O river wind of Uji
- I have come to seek where the mountain cherry glows, and have broken off a spray of the very same blossom for us both to wear
- Though this hut of grass should fall to ruin when I am gone from the world, this one word, I would believe, will neither wither nor part
- In what age to come could I ever part from it— the hut of grass where we have bound between us now a promise for long ages