Tomoshi suru hayama ga suso no shitatsuyu ya iru yori sode wa kaku shioruran - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

照射する端山が裾の下露や
入るより袖はかくしをるらん

Roma-ji: Tomoshi suru hayama ga suso no shitatsuyu ya iru yori sode wa kaku shioruran
English Translation: Is it from the dew
beneath the grass at the foot
of the near hills where
hunters bear their torches, that
my sleeves are drenched as I go in?
Meaning: Is it the dew on the undergrowth at the foot of the hills, where hunters bear torches in the night, that drenches my sleeves the moment I enter? So too, no sooner have I stepped onto the path of love than my sleeves are wet with tears.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 702

Headnote: "Composed on the topic 'First Love' when he composed a hundred-poem sequence at the same house"
Composed on the topic "First love" when he composed a hundred-poem sequence at the same house of Kanezane as the preceding poem. Is it the dew beneath the grass at the foot of the hills where hunters bear torches, he asks, that drenches my sleeves the moment I enter? On the summer night hunt in which hunters carry fire to lure deer, their sleeves are soaked with dew as soon as they step into the foothills, and over this he lays the feeling of first love, the sleeves already wet with tears the moment one sets foot on the path of love. The sequence is that of the Minister of the Right's house in 1178.
The author, "Shunzei, Master of the Empress Dowager's Household," was the son of Provisional Middle Counselor Fujiwara no Toshitada. He served as Master of the Empress Dowager's Household, later took the tonsure under the name Shakua, and compiled this anthology at the command of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa.
Where poems on "the beginning of love" stood together from 641 to 644 at the head of the book, this poem near the end also sings of "first love," so that the book both opens and draws to its close with poems on love's beginning. It also shares with "omou yori itsushika nururu tamoto kana" in 644 the conceit of sleeves wet the moment love begins.

First line, "tomoshi suru": "tomoshi" is a summer night hunt in the hills in which hunters carry fire and shoot the deer drawn to it.
Second line, "hayama ga suso no": "hayama" is a low hill near the villages, as opposed to the deep mountains, "at the foot of the near hills."
Third line, "shitatsuyu ya": "shitatsuyu" is dew on the lower leaves of grass and trees, and "ya" an interrogative binding particle that closes with the attributive "ran" in the last line.
Fourth line, "iru yori sode wa": "iru" overlays entering the hills and entering upon love. "Yori" means "as soon as." It is the same use as "omou yori" in the first line of 644.
Fifth line, "kaku shioruran": "shioru" means to be drenched, and "ran," the attributive of the conjectural of cause "ramu," closes the "ya" of the third line.
Author: Fujiwara no Shunzei
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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