我が宿の尾花が末に白露の
置きし日よりぞ秋風も吹く
置きし日よりぞ秋風も吹く
- Roma-ji
-
Waga yado no obana ga sue ni shiratsuyu no okishi hi yori zo akikaze mo fuku
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Ever since the day the white dew settled on the tips of the pampas grass by my house, the autumn wind has been blowing as well.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 462
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the second poem of the dew sequence. From the day white dew settled on the tips of the pampas grass by the speaker's house, the autumn wind began to blow as well. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was a Nara-period poet and son of Ōtomo no Tabito who rose to Middle Counselor.
The scene is early autumn, in the garden of the speaker's house where pampas grass grows.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
In the first line, "yado" is one's own house or its garden.
In the second line, "obana" are the plumes of pampas grass and "sue" their tips.
The third line gives the subject of "okishi" in the fourth line. The dew moves from the grass blades of 461 to the pampas grass of a garden.
In the fourth line, "shi" is the attributive of the past "ki," and the emphatic "zo" stresses "from that very day the dew settled."
The last line resolves "zo" with the attributive "fuku." "Mo" means "the autumn wind too," setting the settling of dew and the blowing of the wind side by side as signs of autumn's arrival. The point of interest is the order: the dew announces autumn first, and the wind follows. "By my house" also appears in the third line of 464, where dew likewise settles on the grasses of one's own garden.
- Author
- Otomo no Yakamochi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- 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?
- When autumn arrives, with the white dew settling there by my house, the tops of the blades of sparse sedge grass have taken on autumn hues