馴れし秋の更けし夜床はそれながら
心の底の夢ぞ悲しき
心の底の夢ぞ悲しき
- Roma-ji
-
Nareshi aki no fukeshi yodoko wa sore nagara kokoro no soko no yume zo kanashiki
- English Translation
-
The autumns we knew—
the bed of those late nights
remains as it was,
yet the dream deep in my heart
is what fills me with sorrow.
- Meaning
- The bed of the late autumn nights we knew so well remains just as it was, yet it is the dream deep within my heart that is so sorrowful.
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Lament Poems 792
Headnote: "Composed while staying at her house after the death of a woman with whom I had secretly been intimate."
This is the eighteenth poem of the sequence remembering the dead through the things of autumn. It says that the bed of the late autumn nights they knew remains as it was, yet the dream left deep in his heart is sorrowful. According to the headnote, it was composed while he stayed at the house of a woman with whom he had secretly been intimate, after her death.
The son of Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Kin'yoshi and the younger brother of Fujiwara no Sanesada, the author rose to Major Counselor.
The scene is a late autumn night after the woman's death, set at her house.
The direct occasion is staying at the house of the woman who had died.
The first line, "nareshi aki no," means "of the autumns we knew so well." It is hypermetric, with six syllables.
In the second line, "fukeshi yodoko wa," "yodoko" is the bed at night. It speaks of the bed where he spent the late hours of the night with the woman.
The third line, "sore nagara," means "just as it was." The bed remains as before, but the one who was there is gone.
The fourth line, "kokoro no soko no," means "deep within the heart," and modifies "yume," dream, in the last line. Against the visible bed, it points to what lies within.
In the last line, "yume zo kanashiki," "zo" is an emphatic binding particle, completed by the attributive "kanashiki." "Yume" looks back on the days spent with the woman as a fleeting dream. Sharing "zo kanashiki" with the last line of the preceding poem, 791, "ge ni zo kanashiki," it closes the poems of waking and dreams that have continued since 790 of this book.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Saneie
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- In the waking hours of deep autumn, how is it that you call to mind the dream that seemed so fleeting of that night in spring?
- The dream that I saw there is never a time that I forget it, yet waking in the autumn night is sad indeed, as you say.
- Leaving behind him only that name of his which never decays— the pampas grass on the withered moor I see as what he left.
- Tears of longing for the home I left behind? I walk on alone— on the friendless mountain path, the dew on the wayside grass.