言ふからにつらさぞまさる秋の夜の
草の戸ざしにさはるべしやは
草の戸ざしにさはるべしやは
- Roma-ji
-
Iu kara ni tsurasa zo masaru aki no yo no kusa no tozashi ni sawaru beshi ya wa
- English Translation
-
The more that you speak,
the more my bitterness grows—
on an autumn night,
by a door of grass shut fast,
how could true love be held back
- Meaning
- Hearing you say so only makes the pain greater. If your love were real, how could you be stopped by something so slight as a grass door shut on an autumn night?
- Commentary
-
Book Thirteen Love Poems V 900
Headnote: "Reply."
The woman answers that his words only deepen her pain, and asks how anyone could be held back by so slight a thing as a grass door shut on an autumn night. To the man who resents her closed door, she retorts that if his love were real he would not have turned back at such a door, reproaching him for the shallowness of his feeling.
It is the reply to the preceding poem, 899. Taking over its phrase "aki no yo no kusa no tozashi" unchanged, the one who shut the door now faces the one who was shut out.
The poet is listed as anonymous, and the composer's name has not come down to us.
The first line, "Iu kara ni," means "just because you say so."
The second line, "tsurasa zo masaru," means "my pain grows the more," with "zo" an emphatic binding particle closed by the attributive "masaru." The poem pauses here.
The third line, "aki no yo no," means "of an autumn night," the same as the first line of the preceding poem.
The fourth line, "kusa no tozashi ni," means "by a grass door shut," taking up the second line of the preceding poem.
The last line, "sawaru beshi ya wa," means "how could you be stopped? surely not," with "ya wa" expressing a rhetorical question.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Gosen Wakashu
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Aki no yo no kusa no tozashi no wabishiki wa akuredo akenu mono ni zo arikeru
- Next Poem
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Hito shirezu mono omou koro no waga sode wa aki no kusaba ni otorazarikeri