よろづ世をかけて匂はむ花なれば
今日をも飽かぬ色とこそ見れ
今日をも飽かぬ色とこそ見れ
- Roma-ji
-
Yorozuyo o kakete niowamu hana nareba
kyō o mo akanu iro to koso mire - English Translation
-
It is a flower
that will bloom and be fragrant
through ten thousand years,
and so today too I look
on a hue none can tire of
- Meaning
- It is a flower that will bloom and be fragrant through ten thousand ages, and so today too I look on a hue no one can tire of.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Yadorigi
The second poem of the wisteria banquet, spoken by the Emperor. Answering Kaoru's words of awe, he blesses the match as one that will prosper for a long time to come. Trust in the man to whom he has given his daughter, and the good wishes proper to the host of a banquet, are held together in the one poem. The marriage gives Kaoru the weighty position of the Emperor's son-in-law, and that in turn makes him bury his feeling for Uji further out of sight.
Yorozu yo o kakete is through ten thousand ages, the set way of blessing a long prosperity. "A flower that will be fragrant" is a flower that will go on blooming, said both of the wisteria and of the Second Princess. Akanu iro is a colour one does not tire of, and the word aku tightens the second half. He takes over Kaoru's wisteria and turns the deference of the branch beyond reach into a blessing on a flower that will last.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- That the fields have come to the end of autumn, too, is known by nothing but the faint stirring of wind through the slender plume grasses
- Meaning to break it for my sovereign's headdress, I have laid my own sleeve on a wisteria branch that lies beyond my reaching
- The spray I broke off for my sovereign's headdress is a show of flowers yielding nothing whatever to the clouds of deep purple
- It does not look like a colour of the common world—this wisteria, whose flowering waves have risen as far as the reach of cloud