What could he be asking for in his prayers, this old man whose life seemed fragile as the morning dew? “Namu tōrai no Dōshi,” “Glory be to the Saviour that shall come”: now they could hear the words. “Listen,” said Genji tenderly, “is not that an omen that our love shall last through many lives to come?” And he recited the poem: “Do not prove false this omen of the pilgrim’s chant: that even in lives to come our love shall last unchanged.”
Then, unlike the lovers in the “Everlasting Wrong” who prayed that they might be as the “twin birds that share a wing” (for they remembered that this story had ended very sadly), they prayed, “May our love last till Maitreya comes as a Buddha into the World.” But she, still distrustful, answered his poem with the verse: “Such sorrow have I known in this world that I have small hope of worlds to come.” Her versification was still a little tentative.[1]
She was thinking with pleasure that the setting moon would light them on their way, and Genji was just saying so when suddenly the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds. But there was still great beauty in the dawning sky. Anxious to be gone before it was quite light, he hurried her away to the coach and put Ukon by her side.
They drove to an untenanted mansion which was not far off. While he waited for the steward to come out Genji noticed that the gates were crumbling away; dense shinobu-grass grew around them. So somber an entrance he had never seen. There was a thick mist and the dew was so heavy that when he raised the carriage blind his sleeve was drenched. “Never yet has such an adventure as this befallen me,” said Genji; “so I am, as you may imagine, rather excited,” and he made a poem in which he said that though love’s folly had existed since the beginning of the world, never could man have set out more rashly at the break of day into a land unknown. “But to you this is no great novelty?” She blushed and in her turn made a poem: “I am as the moon that walks the sky not knowing what menace the cruel hills may hold in store; high though she sweeps, her light may suddenly be blotted out.”
She seemed very depressed and nervous. But this he attributed to
- ↑ We gather later that she was only nineteen.
