野原より露のゆかりを尋ね来て
我が衣手に秋風ぞ吹く
我が衣手に秋風ぞ吹く
- Roma-ji
-
Nohara yori tsuyu no yukari o tazune kite waga koromode ni akikaze zo fuku
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Seeking out what is kin to the dew, the autumn wind has come from the fields and blows upon my sleeves.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 471
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Among autumn poems."
This is the eleventh and final poem of the dew sequence. The autumn wind comes from the fields seeking what is kin to the dew and blows upon the speaker's tear-wet sleeves. The headnote continues from the preceding poem; it is one of a group of autumn poems.
No author's name is given for this poem, which is placed as Retired Emperor Go-Toba's, continuing the attribution of the preceding poem. The author was a son of Emperor Takakura who established the Poetry Office and ordered the compilation of the Shinkokinshū.
The scene is autumn with the wind blowing, from the fields to the speaker's dew-wet sleeves.
As with the preceding poem, the direct occasion was the composition of autumn poems, though the setting and year are not recorded.
The first line, "nohara yori," means "from the fields," marking where the autumn wind sets out.
In the second line, "yukari" means something related, here what is kin to the dew—the tear-wet sleeves. It builds on 470, where dew was said to settle on brooding sleeves.
The third line, "tazune kite," means "having come seeking," personifying the wind. In 468 a person "goes seeking" through dewy fields; here the autumn wind "comes seeking" from the fields.
In the fourth line, "koromode" are the sleeves, the place the autumn wind finally reaches.
In the last line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by the attributive "fuku." Treating the dew of the fields and the tears on the sleeves as kin, the poem pictures the autumn wind following that bond to the sleeves, and so closes the dew sequence. The same last line appears in 441, where a person seeking the stag met only the autumn wind; here it is the wind that seeks out the sleeves, reversing seeker and sought.
- Author
- Go-Toba In
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- The cricket's chirping as autumn turns to the chill of the nights draws on— is it weakening? its voice grows fainter, drifting away
- Crickets never tire through long nights that will not dawn in the old village— and to deepen my sorrow the wind in the pines blows too