Diaries of Court Ladies
It was the sixth day of the Fifth month—rain not yet stopped. The Prince had been much more touched by her answer of the day before, which was deeper in feeling, and on that morning of heavy rain he sent with much kindness to inquire after her.
Very terrible was the sound of rain …
Of what was I thinking
All the long night through
Listening to the rain against the window?
I was sheltered, but the storm was in my heart.
The lady wrote thus to the Prince, and he thought, "Not hopeless."
His poem:
All the night through, it was of you I thought—
How is it in a house where is no other
To make rain forgotten?
At noon people were talking about the flooding of the Kamo River, and many went to see it, the Prince among them. He wrote:
How are you at present? I have just come back from flood-seeing.
The feeling of my heart, like the overflowing waters of the flood.
But deeper my heart's feeling.
Do you know this?
She wrote:
Toward me the waters do not overflow.
No depth lies there
Though the meadow is flooded.
Words are not enough.
In these words she replied to him; and his Highness made up his mind to come, and ordered perfumery for himself. Just then his old nurse, Jiju-no-Menoto, came up: "Where are you going?" she said,
