あだし野の風になびくな女郎花
我しめ結はむ道遠くとも
我しめ結はむ道遠くとも
- Roma-ji
-
Adashino no kaze ni nabiku na ominaeshi
ware shime yuwamu michi tōku tomo - English Translation
-
Do not bend to the
wind of that field of the dead,
O maiden flower:
I will rope you round as mine,
far though the road may be
- Meaning
- Do not bend to the wind of that field of the dead, maiden flower; I will rope you round as mine, however far the road.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Tenarai
In autumn the Captain, who had been the husband of the nun's dead daughter, came to the house at Ono in memory of his wife. Catching sight of Ukifune from behind through a screen, he was moved, and began to press his suit. The nun wished for the match and fretted over it, but Ukifune refused steadily. On his way back the Captain sent this poem. Ukifune would not answer it, and the nun replied in her place.
Adashino is the burning ground at Adashino, a place name that stands for impermanence, with ada, fickle, sounding in it. The maiden flower is Ukifune. Shime yuu, to rope a thing off, is the standard way of claiming a woman. "However far the road" is the distance out to Ono, and states his resolve to keep coming.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- 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
- Though I go on thus, circling through a bitter world, who in the city of the moon will ever know that I am living at all
- Moved and planted here, the maiden flower is not troubled in her heart— not in this hut of grass, where the bitter world is turned from
- I came here seeking the voice of the pine cricket, and once again I have lost my way among the dew of the bush-clover fields