昨日まで外に忍びし下荻の
末葉の露に秋風ぞ吹く
末葉の露に秋風ぞ吹く
- Roma-ji
-
Kinō made yoso ni shinobishi shitaogi no sueha no tsuyu ni akikaze zo fuku
- English Translation
-
Until yesterday
it hid itself out of sight
the low reed, and now
on the dew of its top leaves
the wind of autumn blows on
- Meaning
- Until yesterday the low reeds kept out of sight; and now the autumn wind blows on the dew at their leaf-tips.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 298
Headnote: an autumn poem, from the time when he presented a fifty-poem sequence.
The run on dew and the autumn wind continues. This poem shows reeds that had been hidden low down now bearing dew at their tips and taking the wind. The headnote assigns it to a fifty-poem sequence.
The poet is Asukai no Masatsune, one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. He appears in Book One from the seventy-fourth poem, in Book Two at the hundred and forty-fifth, and in Book Three at the hundred and eighty-fourth.
The time is early autumn; the place is where reeds grow.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.
The first line takes up the word used in the two hundred and eighty-seventh, eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth poems, so that four pieces stand together on yesterday.
The second line means keeping out of sight, somewhere apart. Shune's two hundred and seventy-fourth poem in Book Three uses the same phrasing of a wind that blew unnoticed; here it is the reed that was hidden.
The third line names the reeds growing low. Looking for the sign of the season low down is the method running since the two hundred and seventieth poem of Book Three.
The fourth line names the topmost leaves. What had been hidden comes into view by holding dew at the tip.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. Something concealed emerging is the shape of the poem, and it follows the reed leaves leaning in the wind of the two hundred and eighty-sixth.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Masatsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On the hill the leaves of the arrowroot have turned their colour, and this morning there is a sadness in the first wind of autumn
- 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
- Even to a man who thinks of nothing at all and lets the world be it teaches the heart to feel the first wind of the autumn
- How they must freeze now the dew upon the grass blades for the autumn wind has risen and gone abroad over Miyagi's wide moor