さを鹿の朝立つ野辺の秋萩に
玉と見るまで置ける白露
玉と見るまで置ける白露
- Roma-ji
-
Saoshika no asa tatsu nobe no akihagi ni tama to miru made okeru shiratsuyu
- English Translation
-
Where the young stag goes
out at morning, on the moor
the autumn clover
and lying on it like beads
the white dew of the morning
- Meaning
- On the autumn clover of the moor where the stag rises at morning, the white dew lies until it looks like strung beads.
- Commentary
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Book Four Autumn Poems I 334
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The seventh poem on bush clover, seeing the dew on it as beads. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Otomo no Yakamochi; this is his second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and eighty-fifth, which opens it.
The time is a morning in autumn; the place is a moor where clover grows.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line names the stag, with a decorative prefix. Masafusa's three hundred and twenty-eighth poem also pairs deer with clover.
The second line gives the moor where the deer rises in the morning.
The third line names the object.
The word in the fourth line marks degree. Seeing dew as beads is the figure of the two hundred and seventy-fifth and two hundred and eightieth poems of Book Three, and it recurs through this anthology.
The poem closes on a noun, with a perfect auxiliary in the attributive form marking the state of lying there. Deer, clover and dew are set side by side and tied by a comparison, a plain construction proper to a poet of the Man'yoshu.
- Author
- Otomo no Yakamochi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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