秋果つるさ夜更け方の月見れば
袖も残らず露ぞ置きける
袖も残らず露ぞ置きける
- Roma-ji
-
Aki hatsuru sayo fukegata no tsuki mireba sode mo nokorazu tsuyu zo okikeru
- English Translation
-
Late in the night's depth
as the autumn draws to close,
gazing at the moon,
not one part of my sleeves spared,
the dew has settled on them
- Meaning
- Gazing at the moon in the depths of night as autumn comes to its end, I find dew has settled on my sleeves, leaving no part untouched.
- Commentary
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Book Five Autumn Poems II 486
Headnote: "Composed after gazing until dawn at the moon, which shone without a shadow on the fifteenth night of the Ninth Month."
This is the first poem of a sequence on the moon and autumn nights. Gazing at the moon late at night near the end of autumn, the speaker finds dew settled over every part of the sleeves. According to the headnote, it was composed after gazing all night at the cloudless moon on the fifteenth night of the Ninth Month.
The author was a son of Chancellor Fujiwara no Tamemitsu who became Middle Captain of the Left Palace Guards but died young. He is one of the Thirty-six Poetic Immortals of the Middle Ages.
The scene is from late night to dawn on the fifteenth of the Ninth Month, where the speaker sat gazing at the moon all night.
The direct occasion was watching the cloudless moon all night on the fifteenth of the Ninth Month. The Ninth Month is the last month of autumn, and its full moon stirs regret for the passing season.
The first line, "aki hatsuru," means autumn is ending, showing that the Ninth Month's full moon of the headnote is autumn's last.
In the second line, "sa" is a prefix: "in the depths of night."
The third line, the realis form with "ba," means "as I gaze at the moon." Taking up the clear moon of 485, the book turns here to moon poems.
The fourth line, "sode mo nokorazu," means leaving no part of the sleeves untouched, showing the abundance of tear-dew.
In the last line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by "keru," the attributive of the exclamatory "keri." Gazing all night, the speaker realizes that tears of regret for passing autumn have become dew covering the sleeves. The same last line appears in 454, where it was real dew on a field-guard's sleeves; here it is the tear-dew of one gazing at the moon, the same phrase serving a different heart.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michinobu
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- A thousand times struck, the fulling block's sound breaks off the dream I was in— on sleeves of one lost in thought the dewdrops shatter and fall
- The night has grown late— near the ridge of the mountains the moon shining cold, in a village far away the sound of robes being struck
- Sleeping all alone, on the long and trailing tail of the mountain bird frost seems to settle and stray— moonlight across my bedding
- The fields I once glimpsed, now all their scenery lies withered at the tips— on the dewdrops for its home the moonlight comes to lodge there