吹き結ぶ風は昔の秋ながら
ありしにも似ぬ袖の露かな
ありしにも似ぬ袖の露かな
- Roma-ji
-
Fukimusubu kaze wa mukashi no aki nagara arishi ni mo ninu sode no tsuyu kana
- English Translation
-
The wind that makes dew
is the same wind of autumn
as in years long past
and the dew upon my sleeve
is not what it was back then
- Meaning
- The wind that gathers the dew is the same autumn wind as of old; and the dew on my sleeve is not what it was.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 312
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The third poem on dew. The wind is unchanged and only the dew on the sleeve has altered, which is to say that the dew is tears. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Ono no Komachi was an early Heian poet; her dates are not recorded. She is counted among both the six and the thirty-six immortals of poetry, and many legends about her beauty have been told.
The time is autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line repeats the opening of Daini no Sanmi's three hundred and tenth poem, so that two pieces begin alike and share the idea of a wind that gathers dew.
The second line names what does not change.
The concessive particle in the third line means: though it is the same autumn as of old.
The fourth line means not like what it was. Suemichi's two hundred and eighty-seventh poem said the wind was not like yesterday's; this one says the dew is not like that of years ago. One form is used on two scales.
The poem closes on a noun. Dew on a sleeve is a tear, and if the wind is the same and the tears are not, it is the speaker's life that has altered. Unchanging nature against a changed self is the subject of the daughter of Shunzei's forty-seventh poem in Book One and Tsurayuki's hundred and sixty-sixth in Book Two, and it recurs through this anthology.
- Author
- Ono no Komachi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The wind of autumn blows and makes the dew, and yet there is not a blade of grass anywhere on which white dew does not lie scattered
- At the break of day when I look at the dew on the reeds' upper leaves there is a chill on the skin in the first wind of autumn
- I too gaze up at the wide sky, and even on the night when he waits the Herdsman, for his lady must I sleep here all alone
- The rain that came down this evening: is it the drops off the Herdsman's oar as he brings his boat across the crossing of the river