Furusato to arenishi yado no kusa no ha mo kimi ga tame to zo mazu wa tsumikeru

English Translation

Even the grasses
of this house you have let run
to waste and ruin
these I picked before all else
thinking they were for your sake

Meaning

Even the grasses of this house, which has gone to ruin for want of you, I picked before anything else, thinking of you.

Commentary

18 The Blades of Grass

The late Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial had stopped visiting the Lady of Nijō, and on the seventh day of the First Month in the following year she sent him young herbs, with this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The prince headed the Ministry of Ceremonial and appears in the seventeenth section as well as the two that follow this one. Of the Lady of Nijō the prose tells us nothing beyond the place her name comes from.
The setting is the seventh day of the First Month, in the year after his visits ceased. It was the custom on that day to gather young herbs, eat them, and send them as gifts.
What prompted the poem was sending those herbs to the prince. It went with them.
The section ends with the poem; no reply from him is recorded. The nineteenth section gives another exchange between the same two, set in autumn.

The word for an old home carries the sense of a place gone to ruin because no one visits, and she puts that ruin first; the phrase that follows names the neglected house.
Grass growing in such a house is a poor thing. The particle after it means even that — even these — and carries into the phrase about his sake.
The phrase in the last line means before anything else, and behind it lies before anyone else. An emphatic particle governs the final verb: it was for him that she picked them.
She lays out no reproach; the young herbs and one poem carry the whole appeal.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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