うたた寝の夜の衣に香るなり
もの思ふ宿の軒の橘
もの思ふ宿の軒の橘
- Roma-ji
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Utatane no yoru no koromo ni kaorunari mono omou yado no noki no tachibana
- English Translation
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On the robes I wear
for a fitful doze at night
fragrance drifts and steals—
from the eaves above the house
where I brood, the orange tree.
- Meaning
- Fragrance steals onto the night robes in which I doze—the mandarin orange by the eaves of the house where I sit lost in thought.
- Commentary
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Summer Poems 161
Headnote: "Mandarin orange scents the night robes"
The poet tells how the scent of the tachibana by the eaves seeps into the night robes in which he dozes, lost in thought. Overlaying a faint fragrance with brooding, he portrays the quiet mood of a summer night.
In the source text consulted, a character in line 2 could not be read and has been supplied from the Teika text's yoru no koromo ni.
Line 1, utatane, means dozing off without going to bed. Poem 172 uses the same phrase, "the night robes of a doze," so fragrance and autumn wind, two different things, reach the same night robes in corresponding poems.
Line 2 means "the robes worn at night."
Line 3: nari infers the presence of the tachibana from its scent, and the poem pauses here.
Line 4, "the house where I brood," is hypermetric.
Line 5 ends on a noun, an inversion that reveals the source of the scent last. Following the tachibana fragrant in the rain in the preceding poem, 160, this poem sings of the tachibana scenting the robes.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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Inishie o shinobu to nashi ni furusato no yūbe no ame ni niou tachibana
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Sode nurete kyō fuku yado no ayamegusa izure no numa ni ta ka hikikemu