Tachibana no hana chiru noki no shinobugusa mukashi o kakete tsuyu zo koboruru

English Translation

Where the orange sheds
its flowers, under the eaves
the remembering
fern hangs, and, calling the past
the dew comes spilling over

Meaning

Under the eaves where the orange sheds its flowers grows the fern of remembrance, and, with the past in mind, the dew comes spilling down.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 241

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The fourth poem on orange blossom, gathering into one piece the orange and the fern, both of which call up the past. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Tadayoshi; this is his second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and thirty-fourth poem.
The time is when the orange flowers are falling; the place is the eaves of a house.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The first two lines fix the place; the flowers are already past their opening.
The third line names a fern that grows at eaves, whose name sounds the verb for remembering. Gyokei's sixty-fourth poem in Book One uses the same play, there beside the jewelled water of the eaves.
The fourth line means holding the past in mind. The verb means to hang a thing in the heart, a different use from the promise of the two hundred and thirty-ninth poem.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive verb at the close. The dew lies on the fern and is at the same time a tear. The orange's scent, the fern's name and the dew are three things that all call up the past, and within the run this poem carries the most of them.

Author

Fujiwara no Tadayoshi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other