秋霧のたつ旅衣おきて見よ
露ばかりなる形見なりとも
露ばかりなる形見なりとも
- Roma-ji
-
Akigiri no tatsu tabigoromo okite miyo tsuyu bakari naru katami nari tomo
- English Translation
-
In the autumn mist
a travel robe was cut for you—
keep it near and look,
though it be a keepsake slight,
no more than a drop of dew.
- Meaning
- I cut this travel robe as the autumn mists rise and you set out. Keep it by you and look upon it, though it is a keepsake no greater than a drop of dew.
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 860
Headnote: "When sending a travel robe to someone going away to the provinces."
This is the fourth poem of the sequence seeing off people bound for distant provinces. Sending a travel robe as the autumn mists rise, the speaker asks that it be kept close and looked upon, however slight a keepsake it may be. According to the headnote, it was composed when sending a travel robe to someone leaving for the provinces.
The author served as chief priest of the Ise Shrine and, as one of the Five Men of the Pear Pavilion, took part in compiling the Gosenshū.
The scene is a departure in the season when autumn mists rise, and the place is the capital.
The direct occasion was the gift of a travel robe to someone going down to the provinces.
The first line, "akigiri no," leads into "tatsu" through the rising of autumn mist. It also shows that the departure took place in autumn, the season of mist.
In the second line, "tatsu tabigoromo," "tatsu" plays on mist rising, cutting cloth, and setting out on a journey. Season, robe, and departure are gathered into a single word.
The third line, "okite miyo," means "keep it by you and look," and the imperative makes a break here. "Oki" carries the sense of dew settling and so is related to "dew" that follows, while also echoing "o kite," "wearing it."
The fourth line, "tsuyu bakari naru," means "as slight as dew," humbly describing the gift. Dew also suggests tears shed at parting.
The last line, "katami nari tomo," means "even if it is but a keepsake," expressing a concessive supposition. Added after the break in the third line as an inversion, it ends by noting how modest the robe is. Poem 857 also sends a robe that doubles as a keepsake, so with the preceding poem of geese bearing letters between them, the theme of robe and keepsake returns.
- Author
- Onakatomi no Yoshinobu
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Bound to be forgotten, yet on the Koshi road there stands Mount Return—and when, at what When-Again, shall I hope to meet that one once more?
- To the wings of geese flying northward far away, entrust your letters— superscriptions on the clouds, written on and never ceasing.
- Even while I see you, my heart can never have its fill— yet down the jeweled road to the far end of the way, why must you go so far?
- If at Ōsaka, the Barrier of Meeting, my house had never stood, those who part from us would not place their trust in meeting again.