Read it through once

After his return from this unsuccessful expedition, Genji felt in no mood for sleep, and soon he jumped up and threw open his casement. The morning mist lay thick over the garden of flowers, which, at the season’s close, looked very battered and wan. Among them, its blossoms shimmering vaguely, was here and there a Morning Glory,[43] growing mixed in among the other flowers. Choosing one that was even more wilted and autumnal than the rest, he sent it to the Momozono palace, with the note: ‘The poor reception which you gave me last night has left a most humiliating and painful impression upon me. Indeed, I can only imagine it was with feelings of relief that you so soon saw my back turned upon your house, though I am loth to think that things can even now have come to such a pass: “Can it be that the Morning Glory, once seen by me and ever since remembered in its beauty, is now a dry and withered flower?” Does it count with you for nothing that I have admired you unrequited, year in year out, for so great a stretch of time? That at least might be put to my credit....’ She could not leave so mannerly an appeal quite unheeded, and when her people pressed round her with ink-stone and brush, she yielded to their persuasion so far as to write the poem: ‘Autumn is over, and now with ghostly flower the Morning Glory withers on the mist-bound hedge.’ ‘Your comparison,’ she added, ‘is so just that the arrival of your note has brought fresh dewdrops to the petals of the flower to whom this reminder was addressed.’ That was all, and it was in truth not very interesting or ingenious. But for some reason he read the poem many times over, and during the course of the day found himself continually looking at it. Perhaps what fascinated him was the effect of her faint, sinuous ink-strokes on the blue-grey writing-paper which her mourning dictated. For it often happens that a letter, its value enhanced to us either by the quality of the writer or by the beauty of the penmanship, appears at the time to be faultless. But when it is copied out and put into a book something seems to have gone wrong.... Efforts are made to improve the sense or style, and in the end the original effect is altogether lost.