露しげみ野辺を分けつつ唐衣
濡れてぞ帰る花の雫に
濡れてぞ帰る花の雫に
- Roma-ji
-
Tsuyu shigemi nobe o waketsutsu karakoromo nurete zo kaeru hana no shizuku ni
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- The dew lies so thick that, pushing my way through the fields, I return with my fine robe soaked by the dripping of the flowers.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 466
Headnote: "When Retired Emperor Go-Reizei was Crown Prince, on the theme 'seeking flowers in the fields.'"
This is the sixth poem of the dew sequence. Seeking flowers through fields thick with dew, the speaker returns with robes wet from the drops falling from the blossoms. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "seeking flowers in the fields" when Go-Reizei was Crown Prince.
The author was a son of Fujiwara no Michinaga who rose to Minister of the Right and was called the Horikawa Minister of the Right from his residence at Horikawa.
The scene is autumn, in flowering fields heavy with dew.
The direct occasion was the topic "seeking flowers in the fields," set in the circle of the future Emperor Go-Reizei, a son of Emperor Go-Suzaku, while he was Crown Prince.
The first line, "tsuyu shigemi," is the "(o) ... mi" construction without "o," meaning "because the dew is thick."
The second line means "pushing through the grasses of the fields," corresponding to "seeking" in the topic.
The third line, "karakoromo," means a fine robe and is the subject of "nurete" in the fourth line.
In the fourth line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by the attributive "kaeru": the speaker returns along the path of the search with robes soaked.
The last line, inverted, names the cause of the wetting at the close. The speaker says the robes were soaked not by dew but by drops from the flowers, adding the charm of a flower-seeking outing. Whereas the poems up to 465 described dew settling, this one describes a person soaked by dew. Poem 468 also imagines someone "drenched by the dew" searching the fields, but where this poem speaks of "returning" after the search, 468 imagines someone "going," so the two form a pair of going and returning.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yorimune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- 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
- What a mystery! on the fields and mountains too the white dew settles— what can it be that it leaves behind, lingering in thought?
- Over the garden on the mugwort growing thick making that excuse, just as it pleases its heart the dewdrops have settled here
- Bending down the blades of grasses on autumn moors the dew lies heavy— drenched by it, will someone still go on seeking through the fields?