露は袖に物思ふころはさぞな置く
かならず秋のならひならねど
かならず秋のならひならねど
- Roma-ji
-
Tsuyu wa sode ni mono omou koro wa sazo na oku kanarazu aki no narai naranedo
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- When one is lost in sorrowful thought, the dew surely settles on one's sleeves—though that is not necessarily a custom of autumn alone.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 470
Headnote: "Among autumn poems."
This is the tenth poem of the dew sequence. In times of sorrowful brooding, dew surely settles on the sleeves—though that is not necessarily a custom of autumn. According to the headnote, it is one of a group of autumn poems.
The author was a son of Emperor Takakura who ruled as retired emperor after abdicating, established the Poetry Office, and ordered the compilation of the Shinkokinshū. Defeated in the Jōkyū War, he was exiled to the Oki Islands.
The scene is a time of brooding, on sleeves where dew settles.
The direct occasion was the composition of autumn poems, though the headnote records neither the setting nor the year.
The first line, "tsuyu wa sode ni," is hypermetric with six syllables and fixes the dew's resting place as the sleeves rather than the grasses.
In the second line, "wa" singles out "in times of brooding," limiting the time.
In the third line, "sazo na" means "surely," strongly affirming that dew settles on the sleeves. The poem breaks here.
The fourth line, together with "naranedo" in the last line, means "not necessarily of autumn."
In the last line, "narai" is custom and "do" a concessive particle; by inversion it attaches to the third line. Against the convention that dew belongs to autumn, the poem argues that dew on the sleeves, as tears of sorrow, knows no season. Taking up 469, which asked whether dew learned from brooding sleeves, it answers with the word "narai" and separates dew on the sleeves from the customs of autumn.
- Author
- Go-Toba In
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- 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?
- 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?
- From the open fields seeking out the kin of dew it has come this way— on the sleeves of my own robe the autumn wind is blowing
- The cricket's chirping as autumn turns to the chill of the nights draws on— is it weakening? its voice grows fainter, drifting away