< Gentian >
Text(Edward G. Seidensticker; The Tale of Genji)
<Heartvine>  p175-14
Gentians and wild carnations peeped from the frosty tangles. After To no Chujo had left, Genji sent a small bouquet by the little boy's nurse, Saisho, to Princess Omiya, with this message:
"Carnation at the wintry hedge remind me
Of an autumn which we leave too far behind.
Do you not think them a lovely color?"

<The Typhoon>  p463-17
Little girls, very pretty in informal dress, were righting the trellises over which her favored gentians and morning glories had been trained.

<Evening Mist>  p695-30
Insect songs, less insistent, among the brown grasses, seemed to say that they must go but did not know where Gentians peered from the grasses, heavy with dew, as if they alone might be permitted to stay on. The sights and sounds of autumn, ordinary enough, but recast by the occasion and the place into a melancholy scarcely to be borne.

Back to "Plants in Genji Monogatari"