Aki wa tada kokoro yori oku yūtsuyu o sode no hoka to mo omoikeru kana

English Translation

Autumn, I had thought
was a thing outside my sleeve
but this evening dew
comes and settles from within
out of my own heart alone

Meaning

Autumn is nothing but an evening dew that settles out of the heart; and I had taken it for something outside my sleeve.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 297

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poem redefines the dew of autumn as something rising from within rather than a feature of the world outside. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Echizen was a lady-in-waiting and poet in the service of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, though little is recorded of her life. In Book One she is the poet of the twenty-fourth poem and in Book Two of the hundred and twenty-seventh.
The time is an evening at the beginning of autumn; no place is given.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line means: autumn is nothing but. The poem opens by defining what the season is.
The second line means settling out of the heart. Dew lies on grass, and here it is made to rise from within. After the dew of the village in the two hundred and ninety-third poem and the dew of the sleeve in the two hundred and ninety-fourth, its place moves further inward still; across three poems it travels from the village to the sleeve and from the sleeve to the heart.
The third line names it.
The fourth line means: as something outside the sleeve. The mistake is stated: she had taken it for something beyond herself.
An exclamatory auxiliary at the close marks the recognition of that mistake, and a final particle doubles the exclamation. The sadness of autumn does not arrive from outside but was within from the first, and the run on early autumn ends on the side of the mind.

Author

Echizen

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other