置く露もしづ心なく秋風に
乱れて咲ける真野の萩原
乱れて咲ける真野の萩原
- Roma-ji
-
Oku tsuyu mo shizugokoro naku akikaze ni midarete sakeru Mano no hagihara
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Even the dew that settles has no rest, and in the autumn wind they bloom all in confusion: the clover fields of Mano.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 332
Headnote: topic unknown.
The fifth poem on bush clover, on the clover tossed by the wind and the dew that cannot settle on it. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Yushi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Suzaku; her dates are not recorded. The princess she served is the one named in the headnotes to the hundred and third poem of Book Two and the fifty-sixth of Book One.
The time is autumn; the place is Mano in Omi Province, in what is now Otsu.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The particle in the first line carries the sense of the dew as well, so that not only the flowers but the dew is unsettled.
The word in the second line means a settled, quiet heart, used of the waves of the River of Heaven in Sukechika's three hundred and seventeenth poem, where it stood for the hearts of those awaiting the meeting; here it is given to the dew.
The third line names the cause.
The fourth line means blooming in disorder. The verb is the one used of dew in Daini no Sanmi's three hundred and tenth poem.
The poem closes on a noun naming an expanse thick with clover. Wind, flower and dew are stacked as three unsettled things, and restlessness runs through the whole.
- Author
- The Lady Kii of Princess Yushi's Household
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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