If you lend me a
lodging, I will sleep one night—
even though my heart
is not one that turns aside
to the common run of flowers

Meaning

If you lend me a lodging I will sleep one night, even though mine is not a heart that turns to the common run of flowers.

Commentary

Part Three: Kagero

　Kaoru's poem closes the set on the maiden flower. He lets the challenge pass and answers lightly that if a lodging is offered he will stay. His mind, though, is with the people he lost at Uji, and directly afterwards he sits alone in the autumn dusk and thinks back over what became of the three sisters.

　Yado kasaba is if you lend me lodging, taking up her tabine shite. Hitoyo wa nenamu is that he will stay a single night. "The common run of flowers" are ordinary ones, women he cares nothing for. He appears to accept while stating flatly that his heart does not move, and even in play he keeps his line.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

As for flowers, it is the name alone that is light—does the maiden flower fall into disorder for any dew that may come
Stay the night and put it to the proof: whether the maiden flower will change the colour it wears at its height, or whether it will not
I saw it was there, and it was not to be caught; I looked, and again it had vanished, with no trace of where it went—the mayfly
Who was it that set a weir across the swift shoals of that river of tears into which I threw myself, and held me back there

If you lend me a lodging, I will sleep one night— even though my heart is not one that turns aside to the common run of flowers

If you lend me a
lodging, I will sleep one night—
even though my heart
is not one that turns aside
to the common run of flowers