君が折る峰の蕨と見ましかば
知られやせまし春のしるしも
知られやせまし春のしるしも
- Roma-ji
-
Kimi ga oru mine no warabi to mimashikaba
shirare ya semashi haru no shirushi mo - English Translation
-
Had I been able
to see them as bracken shoots
you had picked yourself
on the peak, I might have known
them for a sign of springtime
- Meaning
- Had I been able to see them as bracken you yourself had picked on the peak, I might have known them for a sign of spring.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
With the new year, bracken and cress arrived from the abbot at the mountain temple. While their father lived, such first gifts of the season had been set before him. Remembering this, Oigimi spoke, and Naka no Kimi followed. The loneliness of a first spring with only the two of them is drawn through a gift of wild greens.
The bracken is the season's first, sent down from the temple. Mashikaba ... mashi is contrary to fact, the impossible supposition that her father had gathered them. "A sign of spring" is the proof that spring has come, and she turns it into a lament that the season may turn while the heart does not. A small customary gift becomes the measure of how much has been lost.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Over the hill stream shut in ice, which the horse breaks underfoot, shall I, while I am about guiding another, be first to cross?
- The foot of the oak I had trusted for the shade I might turn aside to has become, I find now, an empty seat and nothing
- For whose sake now should I gather and make much of the little cress at the deep-snowed edge of the stream, having no parent living
- The cherry I saw at your house at second hand— this spring let me go with no haze set between us, break it off and wear the spray