草の葉にかかれる露の身なればや
心動くに涙おつらむ
心動くに涙おつらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Kusa no ha ni kakareru tsuyu no mi nareba ya kokoro ugoku ni namida otsuramu
- English Translation
-
Is it because this
body of mine is a drop
of dew on a leaf
that the least movement of the
heart sends the tears running down
- Meaning
- Is it because this body of mine is a drop of dew on a leaf that the least movement of the heart sends the tears down?
- Commentary
-
123 When the Heart Moves
The same priest Zōki composed this poem; to whom he sent it is not known. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Zōki appears in the hundred and twenty-second section, exchanging poems with Toshiko at Shiga temple. Of the recipient the prose says only that it is not known.
Neither time nor place is given.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded.
A body like dew on a leaf is one that spills at the least disturbance, and that frailty is laid over himself.
The grammar of the second line supposes a cause: is it because of that?
The heart's moving in the fourth line is the same motion as a leaf's stirring.
The closing supposes the tears falling, so that dew spilling and tears falling become one. Leaf and dew, stirring and weeping run through the whole, and a priest's being moved is explained as a property of dew.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- If it were not that meeting must be followed by parting, I would not be brooding over this and that, half of one thing, half another
- How is it that you can brood over this and that by halves — for my part there is nothing left of me nothing over: I am grief
- In the fields of spring the sanekazura shines out green among the rest and so I would have you first of all — what do you say to it
- Not knowing at all what fate the years would bring you I made you promises once, long ago — do they come back to you at all, I wonder