夕されば玉散る野辺の女郎花
枕定めぬ秋風ぞ吹く
枕定めぬ秋風ぞ吹く
- Roma-ji
-
Yū sareba tama chiru nobe no ominaeshi makura sadamenu akikaze zo fuku
- English Translation
-
When the evening comes
where the beads of dew are shed
the maiden-flowers
cannot settle on a place
to lay their heads: the wind blows
- Meaning
- When evening comes, on the moor where the dew is shed like beads, the autumn wind blows and gives the maidenflowers no place to lay their heads.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 338
Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The third poem on the maidenflower. Flowers that will not stay still in the wind are taken for a woman who cannot settle where to sleep. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Yoshihira (1184-1240), a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Kanezane and younger brother of Yoshitsune, poet of the two hundred and ninety-third and others. In Book Two he is the poet of the hundred and forty-fourth poem.
The time is an autumn evening; the place is a moor where the maidenflower grows.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The verb in the first line means to come round: when evening comes on. It is the phrase of Sanesada's three hundred and fourth poem.
The second line means a moor where dew is shed like beads, the figure used in the three hundred and thirty-fourth poem.
The third line names the flower.
The fourth line means unable to settle where to lay one's head. Flowers unsteady in the wind are described as the restlessness of one sleeping alone, on the assumption that the flower is a woman.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. The restlessness of the three hundred and thirty-second poem, there given to clover, is here transferred to the maidenflower.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshihira
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- For whom is she then the maiden-flower that stands on Matsuchi hill there must be someone with whom she has made a pact for fall
- Maiden-flower, do you remember the old home out on the wide moor and do you long for the voice of the insect that lodged there
- Whose the boneset is there is no knowing, and white the dew that spills down and the fragrance rises up in the wind across the moor
- In a thin mist, on the flowers of the hedgerow the damp of morning and who was it who declared that autumn is for evening