草葉には玉と見えつつわび人の
袖の涙の秋の白露
袖の涙の秋の白露
- Roma-ji
-
Kusaba ni wa tama to mietsutsu wabibito no sode no namida no aki no shiratsuyu
- English Translation
-
On the blades of grass
they seem to be shining gems,
yet they are the tears
on the sleeves of those who grieve—
the white dewdrops of autumn
- Meaning
- On the grass blades they look like jewels, yet they are the tears on the sleeves of the sorrowful—the white dew of autumn.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 461
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the first poem of the dew sequence. Autumn's white dew looks like jewels on the grass blades, but on the sleeves of the sorrowful it is tears. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was a son of Sugawara no Koreyoshi who rose to Minister of the Right but was demoted to Supernumerary Governor-General of Dazaifu and died in exile; he was later posthumously named Chancellor, hence the title "the Posthumous Chancellor Sugawara."
The scene is autumn, on dew-laden grass blades and on the sleeves of one in sorrow.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
In the first line, "wa" singles out "on the grass blades," setting it against "the sleeves" of the fourth line.
In the second line, "tama" are jewels, to which the dew is likened; "tsutsu" means "while," leading on to "yet on the other hand."
In the third line, "wabibito" is one who lives in grief, unable to have things as wished.
In the fourth line, the same dew becomes, on the sleeves of the grieving, tears. The sleeves shift from those wet from planting in 460 to sleeves wet with tears.
The last line ends on a noun, naming at the close the thing likened. It contrasts two appearances of dew depending on where it settles—jewels on grass, tears on sleeves—and lays human sorrow over autumn dew. Where 446 overlaid the stag's tears on the dew of the bush clover, here the dew is human tears. Placed at the head of the dew sequence, the link between dew on the sleeves and brooding is questioned further through reasoning in 469 and 470.
- Author
- Sugawara no Michizane
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On the hillside slopes where the stag calls for his mate the early rice fields I will leave unreaped for now, even though the frost settles
- The mountain rice plants reaped and hung up now to dry no longer appear as the seedlings that I set, sleeves soaked through, in the paddy
- Since the day white dew first settled upon the tips of the pampas grass by my house, it is from then that the autumn wind blows too
- Now that autumn's come, is it as if by a pledge that they form and bind— on the plain of sparse sedge grass, the white dewdrops of this dawn?