the light leaf scatters in the wind

one evening when the crimson carpet was ruffled by a gusty wind, she filled a little box with red leaves from different trees and sent it to murasaki. as messenger she chose one of the little girls who waited upon her. the child, a well-grown, confident little thing, came tripping across the humped wooden bridge that led from the empress’s apartments with the utmost unconcern. pleased though murasaki was to receive this prompt mark of friendship, she could for a while do nothing but gaze with delight at the messenger’s appearance, and she quite forgot to be resentful, as some in her place would have been, that an older and more dignified messenger had not been entrusted with the empress’s gift. the child wore a silk shirt, yellow outside and lined with green. her mantle was of brown gauze. she was used to running about on messages in the palace, had that absolute faultlessness of turn-out and bearing which seems never to be found elsewhere, and was far from being over-awed at finding herself in the presence of such a person as lady murasaki. attached to the box was the poem: “though yours be a garden where only springtime is of price, suffer it that from my house autumn should blow a crimson leaf into your hand.” it was amusing to see how while murasaki read the missive, her ladies crowded round the little messenger and plied her with refreshments and caresses. for answer, murasaki placed in the lid of the box a carpet of moss and on it laid a very little toy rock. then she wrote on a strip of paper tied to a sprig of five-pointed pine: “the light leaf scatters in the wind, and of the vaunted spring no tinge is left us, save where the pine-tree grips its ledge of stone.

excerpted from lady murasaki's "the tale of genji"