Uchitokete kimi wa netsuramu ware wa shimo tsuyu no okiite koi ni akashitsu

English Translation

You will have slept well
at your ease, I suppose, while
I, for my part, lay
awake as the dew settled
and passed the night in longing

Meaning

You will have slept at your ease, I suppose. I, for my part, lay awake while the dew settled, and passed the whole night in longing.

Commentary

46 At Isonokami

Heichū, after a long break in his relations with the Lady of Kan'in, met her again. Afterwards he sent her "Uchitokete kimi wa netsuramu ware wa shimo tsuyu no okiite koi ni akashitsu", and her reply was "Shiratsuyu no okifushi tare o koitsuramu ware wa kikiowazu Isonokami nite". That is the whole of the section.
Heichū is Taira no Sadafun, known as a great lover, who appears again in the hundred and third section. Of the Lady of Kan'in the prose tells us only the residence her name comes from.
The setting is after a long estrangement had ended and they had met again.
What prompted the poem was the night that followed that meeting. It was sent to her.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section.

The first word means at ease, unguarded. He begins by supposing how comfortably she slept.
An emphatic particle in the third line turns the poem to himself: as for me. The two of them are set out as a pair.
The verb in the fourth line means both to settle, as dew does, and to be awake and up. Through the night when the dew settled, he was sitting up.
The closing says he passed the night in longing. The whole reproach is the contrast between the one who slept and the one who could not, and not a word of accusation is used.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other