Shinonome ni okikeru sora ni omōede ayashiku tsuyu to kiekaeritsuru

English Translation

At the daybreak sky
I rose, and never thought that
I would come to this:
strangely, like the dew, I have
faded and faded away.

Meaning

Rising into the sky of dawn, I never thought it would be so; yet strangely, like dew, I have faded quite away.

Commentary

3 The Marriage to Kaneie Is Settled

Letters came from Kaneie again and again, and still the author did not answer. Her father Tomoyasu said it was a presumption to leave him waiting and that a proper reply ought to be sent, so he had a suitable person write one on her behalf. Kaneie took this in earnest and was delighted, and letters passed frequently between the houses; but he complained that the hand was not hers and asked repeatedly for an answer written by the lady herself. Each time, the household put him off with another substitute's hand, and the months went by in nothing but formal correspondence. Autumn came, and through the exchange of poems the two were drawn on toward marriage.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, a man of the provincial governor class who would go down to Mutsu as its governor at the end of this year.
It is autumn in the eighth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
It arrived on a morning some three days after the exchange about the river Ōi.
The author answered with "Sadame naku kiekaeritsuru tsuyu yori mo soradanome suru ware wa nani nari." Letters continued to pass between them, and the narrative moves on to the scene of "Omōenu kakiho ni oreba nadeshiko no hana ni zo tsuyu wa tamarazarikeri."

The first line sets the hour at daybreak, the proper time for a morning-after letter. The verb in the second line means to rise from sleep and also carries the settling of dew, which prepares the dew of the fourth line. The word for sky is at once the sky of dawn and a mind gone absent from itself. The third line means without any expectation of it. The fourth means strangely even to himself, that is, more deeply shaken than he had looked to be. The verb at the close belongs to the dew imagery and describes a spirit on the point of vanishing. Pivot words and related words are layered throughout, in the conventional manner of a poem sent on the morning after.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other