まだ知らぬ人を初めて恋ふるかな
思ふ心よ道しるべせよ
思ふ心よ道しるべせよ
- Roma-ji
-
Mada shiranu hito o hajimete kouru kana omou kokoro yo michishirube seyo
- English Translation
-
For the first time now
I love one whom I have never
come to know at all:
O my heart that holds this love,
be the guide upon my way
- Meaning
- For the first time I find myself in love with someone I have never yet met. O heart that loves, be my guide along the road to her.
- Commentary
-
Book Eleven Love Poems I 642
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed on the topic 'The Beginning of Love' when hundred-poem sequences were presented in the reign of Emperor Horikawa"
Like the preceding poem, composed on the topic "The beginning of love" for the Horikawa sequences. I love for the first time one I have never known, she says; O loving heart, be my guide. At the start of a love where she knows neither the face nor the way, she asks her own heart to lead her, expressing the helplessness of one who has just stepped onto the road of love. The fourth line in the text reads "omou kokoro yo," which does not match "omonu kokoro yo" in the line of kana readings; the text is followed here.
The author, "Higo of the Former Empress Dowager," is said to have been the daughter of Fujiwara no Sadanari. She was a lady-in-waiting to the Nijō Grand Empress Dowager, Princess Reishi, and one of the poets of the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences.
This is the second poem in the sequence. Its last line, "michishirube seyo," is the same as the last line of 678 of this book, and both share a heart lost on the road of love calling for a guide. Poem 644 then calls tears the "guide" of love, so that poems on love's guide follow one another.
First line, "mada shiranu": "whom I have not yet met," modifying "hito" in the second line.
Second line, "hito o hajimete": "that person, for the first time," taking up "the beginning of love" in the topic.
Third line, "kouru kana": "kana" is an exclamatory final particle, "how I love." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "omou kokoro yo": an address to her own loving heart.
Fifth line, "michishirube seyo": "michishirube" means a guide, and "seyo" is the imperative of "su," "be my guide." It is the same as the last line of 678.
- Author
- Higo
- Source
- Senzai Wakashu
- Prev Poem
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Naniwae no mo ni uzumoruru tamagashiwa arawarete dani hito o koibaya
- Next Poem
-
Warinashi ya omou kokoro no iro naraba kore zo sore to mo iwamashi mono o