おぼつかな野にも山にも白露の
何事をかは思ひおくらん
何事をかは思ひおくらん
- Roma-ji
-
Obotsukana no ni mo yama ni mo shiratsuyu no nanigoto o ka wa omoi okuran
- English Translation
-
What a mystery!
on the fields and mountains too
the white dew settles—
what can it be that it leaves
behind, lingering in thought?
- Meaning
- How puzzling it is: the white dew settling on fields and mountains alike—what is it brooding over, that it lingers behind?
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 465
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fifth poem of the dew sequence. Wondering at the white dew settling on fields and mountains alike, the poet asks what it could be brooding over that it lingers. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was a son of Emperor Daigo whose reign was praised as the Tenryaku rule, and who ordered the compilation of the Gosenshū. The designation "a poem of the Tenryaku sovereign" refers to his poems by the era name of his reign.
The scene is autumn, across fields and mountains covered in white dew.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "obotsukana," is the stem of the adjective "obotsukanashi," an exclamation meaning "how uncertain, how troubling." The poem breaks here.
The second line, "on fields and on mountains," shows how widely the dew has settled.
The third line gives the subject of "omoi oku" in the last line.
In the fourth line, the particles "ka" and "wa" strengthen the question and are bound to "ran" in the last line.
In the last line, "oku" is a pivot word joining "omoi oku," to leave one's thoughts behind, with the dew that "settles" (oku); "ran" is the attributive of the conjectural "ramu." Seeing the dew that settles everywhere as something lingering with thoughts left behind, the poet guesses at its heart. Like "chigiri okite ya" in 463, the poem uses a pivot on "oku" and shares the conceit of dew as a being with feelings. Where 463 saw the dew as keeping a promise, this poem sees it as leaving thoughts behind, approaching the dew's heart from another direction.
- Author
- Emperor Murakami
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- With the dew so thick I push through the meadow grass— my fine robe soaks through; drenched I make my way back home in the drip of the flowers
- Over the garden on the mugwort growing thick making that excuse, just as it pleases its heart the dewdrops have settled here