Left (Tie)
この比の心の底をよそに見ば鹿鳴く野邊の秋の夕暮
| kono koro no kokoro no soko o yoso ni miba shika naku nobe no aki no yūgure |
Of late Of the depths of my heart Were you to catch a distant glimpse: A stag belling in the meadow On an autumn evening… |
A Servant Girl
1067
Right
暮れかゝる裾野の露に鹿鳴きて人待つ袖も涙そふ也
| kurekakaru susono no tsuyu ni shika nakite hito matsu sode mo namida sou nari |
Twilight Drapes dewfall on the mountains’ skirts, With a stag’s sad cry; Awaiting him, my sleeves, too, Are wet with tears. |
Nobusada
1068
Left and Right together: we find no faults to mention.
In judgement: it would be impossible to ever exhaust the overtones of feeling in ‘a stag belling in the meadow on an autumn evening’ (shika naku nobe no aki no yūgure) in the Left’s poem; in the Right’s poem the configuration and conception of ‘awaiting him, my sleeves, too, are wet with tears’ (hito matsu sode mo namida sou nari) is richly evocative. I find it extremely hard to put both poems down, so this round, again, is a tie of quality.