女郎花しをれぞまさる朝露の
いかに置きける名残なるらむ
いかに置きける名残なるらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Ominaeshi shiore zo masaru asatsuyu no
ika ni okikeru nagori naruramu - English Translation
-
The maiden flower is
more drooping than before—how,
I wonder, did the
morning dew set itself down
and leave this trace behind it
- Meaning
- The maiden flower droops more than before; how, I wonder, did the morning dew settle and leave this trace behind?
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Yadorigi
On the morning after the wedding Niou sent his letter to the Sixth Daughter. She was not yet in a position to write an answer herself, and this poem was made in her place by her foster mother, the Ochiba Princess. The Sixth Daughter was Yugiri's child by To no Naishi, and because her own mother was of low rank the princess had taken her as a foster daughter. The letter keeps the form of the match, but Niou's heart was still with Naka no Kimi, and his nights away from the Nijo residence and his visits to it alternate from here.
The maiden flower is the Sixth Daughter and the morning dew is Niou. To say that the flower droops the more for the trace the dew has left describes the girl after her first night. Ikani okikeru asks how the dew set itself down, a gentle sounding-out of how the man had behaved. It keeps to form, as a poem made on another's behalf should, taking care not to let the girl's own voice be heard directly.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- At this house of mine, where even the moon of the wide sky puts up, now the evening of waiting goes by, and you are not in sight
- Even in the shade of the pines of a mountain village there was no autumn wind that went into me so deeply as this one
- I would have heard it as one hears a common thing— the cicada's voice, which is hateful to me now, at the closing of autumn
- Look where I will, the world gives us no leave—and yet the name of having grown used to the barrier river is a thing to grieve