Diaries of Court Ladies
waiting. So you must remain here, and I must depart for Eternity.—Oh, in what way may I provide a way for you to live in the Capital decently!
Night and day he lamented, saying these things, and I forgot all about flowers or maple leaves, grieving sadly, but there was no help for it.
He went down[1] on the thirteenth of the Seventh month, 1032.
For several days before that I could not remain still in my own room, for I thought it difficult to see him again.
On that day [the 13th] after restless hours, when the [time for] parting came, I had lifted the blind and my eye met his, from which tears dropped down. Soon he had passed by.[2] My eyes were dim with tears and soon I concealed myself in bed [tears were bad manners]. A man who had gone to see him off returned with a poem written on a bit of pocket paper.
A message from her father:
If I could do as I wish
I could acknowledge more profoundly
The sorrow of departing in Autumn.
[The last line has, of course, reference to his age and the probability of never returning.]
- ↑ Away from the Capital where the King resides is always down; towards the capital is always up.
- ↑ This scene will be better understood by the reader if he remembers that her father was in the street in the midst of his train of attendants—an imposing cavalcade of bow-men, warriors, and attendants of all sorts, with palanquins and luggage, prepared to make a two or three months' journey through the wilderness to the Province of Hitachi, far in the East. She, as a Japanese lady could not go out to speak to him, but unconventionally she had drawn up the blind and "her eye met his."
