萩が花ま袖にかけて高圓の
尾上の宮に領巾振るや誰
尾上の宮に領巾振るや誰
- Roma-ji
-
Hagi ga hana masode ni kakete Takamado no onoe no miya ni hire furu ya tare
- English Translation
-
With clover flowers
laid across her sleeves, and who
was it, waving there
her scarf at the palace on
the ridge of Takamado
- Meaning
- With clover blossom laid across both sleeves, who was it waving her scarf at the palace on the ridge of Takamado?
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 331
Headnote: from the fifty poems set by Cloistered Prince Shukaku.
The fourth poem on bush clover. A figure with clover on her sleeves is seen at the site of an old palace. The headnote assigns it to the set of fifty poems from which the thirty-eighth and fortieth poems of Book One, the two hundred and forty-seventh of Book Three and the two hundred and ninety-second of this book also come.
The Monk Kensho was a scholar of poetry of the Rokujo house, adopted by Fujiwara no Akisuke and author of commentaries on the older anthologies. This is his second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and ninety-sixth poem.
The time is autumn; the place is Takamado in Yamato Province, east of what is now Nara, where a detached palace once stood and which is written of in the Man'yoshu.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.
The scarf named was a long band of cloth worn over the shoulders by women and waved in farewell.
The possessive in the first line is an old form.
The word in the second line means both sleeves, with a prefix. To lay flowers on the sleeve is to wear them, of a piece with the wearing of blossom in the hair in the hundred and fourth and hundred and fifty-first poems of Book Two.
The third line fixes the place.
The word in the fourth line means a ridge, and the palace named is the old detached palace there.
An interrogative particle closes the poem: who was it? A figure is seen where no one should now be, and an older age is called back before the eyes. The conceit of reviving the world of the Man'yoshu suits a poet who was a scholar of it.
- Author
- The Monk Kensho
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- This hunting robe: I shall not dye it myself, no but leave it to be stained by the clover flowers of the moor, deep in its dew
- I shall not pass by without breaking off a spray of autumn's clover though my flower-dyed robe should be soaked and stained by the dew
- Even the dew there has no quiet in its heart and in the fall wind they bloom in disorder there the clover fields of Mano
- Where the clover blooms and falls, out across the moor in the evening dew come to me, though you are wet and though the night has grown late