Do you take it for
an ordinary matter—
that I made my way
parting the bamboo grass on
a road so deep in the dew

Meaning

Do you take it for an ordinary matter that I came parting the bamboo grass on a road so deep in dew?

Commentary

Part Three: Agemaki

　Written in the morning-after letter, on the day after Niou and Naka no Kimi were joined. He urges the hardship of the night road from the capital to Uji as proof that his feeling is out of the common. After this he tries to keep coming, but his mother, the Akashi Empress, forbids him to leave the palace, and he cannot.

　Yo no tsune ni is as a common thing. The dew-soaked field of bamboo grass gives the length and difficulty of the road to Uji. To urge the distance of the way is standard in a morning-after letter, but the remoteness of Uji itself already hints at the insecurity of the match.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Am I, who served as guide, the one to lose his way coming back again, on this road in the half dark where my heart has not gone through
Think, then, of a heart that spends its days in the dark on this side and that, if you go astray upon a road no one sent you down
Though I do not say that we have worn the night robe until it grew soft, surely I am not without the right to a grievance
Though our hearts may pass between us without a screen, I would have you not speak of sleeves that have grown soft with long wearing, one on one

Do you take it for an ordinary matter— that I made my way parting the bamboo grass on a road so deep in the dew

Do you take it for
an ordinary matter—
that I made my way
parting the bamboo grass on
a road so deep in the dew