秋の野の草葉押しなみ置く露に
濡れてや人の尋ね行くらん
濡れてや人の尋ね行くらん
- Roma-ji
-
Aki no no no kusaba oshinami oku tsuyu ni nurete ya hito no tazune yukuran
- English Translation
-
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?
- Meaning
- Drenched by the dew that weighs down the grasses of the autumn moor, will someone still make their way there in search?
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 468
Headnote: "At Retired Emperor Shirakawa's, on the theme 'dew thick on field grasses.'"
This is the eighth poem of the dew sequence. The poet imagines someone making their way, soaked by the dew that weighs down the grasses of the autumn fields. According to the headnote, it was composed at Retired Emperor Shirakawa's on the topic "dew thick on field grasses."
The author was a son of Master of the Palace Repairs Office Fujiwara no Akisue who rose to Provisional Middle Counselor. His daughter Tokushi became Bifukumon'in, empress of Emperor Toba, and as maternal grandfather of Emperor Konoe he was posthumously named Minister of the Left.
The scene is autumn, in fields where dew lies heavy on the grasses.
The direct occasion was the topic "dew thick on field grasses," set in the presence of Retired Emperor Shirakawa.
The first line presents the "field" of the topic.
In the second line, "oshinami" is the continuative of "oshinamu," to press down, showing the grass blades bent flat under the weight of dew; it corresponds to "field grasses" in the topic.
The third line presents the "thick dew" of the topic, dew so heavy it presses the grass down.
In the fourth line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran" in the last line; it is the person crossing the fields who is soaked by the dew.
In the last line, "ran," the attributive of the conjectural "ramu," imagines someone unseen making their way across the fields, soaked with dew. Whereas 467, on the same topic of thick dew, sang of a garden where no one comes, this poem sings of fields that people enter, pairing garden and field, a place without visitors and a person who seeks. Poem 466 says "drenched I make my way back home" after seeking flowers, and this poem's "drenched ... go on seeking" forms with it a pair of returning and going.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Nagazane
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- Did the dew perhaps learn it from the sleeves of one lost in brooding thought— that when the autumn wind blows it cannot hold itself back?
- On sleeves, the dew falls when one is lost in brooding, surely it settles, though it need not be the way of autumn alone to fall