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“Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part: the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life.
artless innocence
Five Altar Rite
dark confusion,
The conversation of a pair so deeply engaged with one another must have been extremely moving.
“Two thousand leagues away, the heart of a friend…”
Alas, I must excuse myself for the present, for many people I know have come forward to greet me, including some members of my family, and considering the possible awkwardness involved, I think it preferable to refrain.
the crickets whose song is so wasted in the fields,
They all were blowing their noses and resting their gaze fondly on some little plant or tree that they had never noticed much before.
As a young man I would have felt betrayed, he reflected, but wider experience has made me more tolerant;
wholly to pious practice and ignored events at court. The spring and autumn progresses 40 were what brought him memories of the past.
He went on, “As for me, I grew up from my earliest youth amid grandeur that others never know, and by now I enjoy such honor as has seldom been known before.
“I have long since learned how very cruel a time autumn often brings, yet I would not wish to lose the bell cricket's lovely song,”
“I have helplessly left my soul all entangled in your cruel sleeves, and through no fault but my own I remain vacant and lost.
“I had had the impression that she was better,” he said after regaining something of his composure, “and the idea lulled me into complacency.
Chūjō
KUMOGAKURE
“What a shame,” she remarked, “that His Highness is courting instead, however lightheartedly, a girl he can have no hope of winning. What a waste!”
this latecomer seemed to draw all eyes when he arrived, and a susceptible young woman remarked, “Yes, he really is different!”
Beneath a sky veiled far and wide by the mists of spring, some cherry trees were shedding their petals while others were just coming into bloom, and one admired along the river a lovely prospect of wind-tossed willows reflected in the stream.
His Majesty is concerned about you as well.”
Tales of Ise,
I knew that even if she had become her sister, I could not really have loved anyone else, but still, I should never have caused her such sorrow; I should have courted her sister instead and accepted her in consolation for my infinite loss.
Again he tried all his eloquence on her, but she wanted him to taste for himself the bitterness of his own indifference, and she refused to yield.
“Looking out, I see how the wandering moon as well rises from the hills, finds no solace in the world, and then to the hills returns.”
It is odd of me, though, when some would be only too pleased.
This is exactly why it happened!
“and since he is not just anyone, I decided to agree,
If I had only myself to look after, I would just disappear somewhere and be a nobody.
he was not a man to do anything rash or ill considered, and she knew that he would be discreet for her sake, too.
they warned.
How absolutely awful it would be if anyone were to breathe a word to him about how different I feel now, she said to herself.
“She usually had extraordinarily little to say, Your Highness,” she explained. “She was never one to express herself clearly, and it was rare for her to tell anyone else even about things that affected her deeply. I expect that this reticence of hers is the reason why she left no last words either.
She is just a common young woman with a particularly light burden of karmic sin.”
“What strange words, as rare as new grass in spring!
The “dew” refers to tears.
Clothing and Color
