When night breaks,
I would thrust it in the tub—
that foolish cock,
crying too soon,
has sent my husband away.

Meaning

When night has broken, I would thrust it into the tub—the foolish cock that, crying too soon before the dawn, has sent my beloved husband away.

Commentary

Episode Fourteen: "To become a silkworm"

A man traveled aimlessly to the province of Mutsu and there met a woman who lived in that land. The woman, intrigued by the man who had come from the capital, grew fond of him.

Moved, though somewhat troubled, by the woman’s simple and one-sided love expressed in the poem, "Rather than languish so and not even die of love, it would have been better to become a silkworm, even with a life as short as a jewel-cord’s span," the man spent a night with her.
This poem was composed by the woman after the man had left at daybreak.

Source

Ise Monogatari

Other

If I write, you say too much; if I do not, you resent me— Musashi stirrups hanging on either side: is it at such a time that one must die?
Rather than thus not die of love at all, better to have been a silkworm— with but a jewel-cord’s span of life.
If you were a person like the Aneha pine of Kurihara, as a keepsake for the capital I would say, come, let us go.
On Shinobu Mountain, a hidden path for secret visits— would that there were one, that I might even see the depths of her heart.

When night breaks, I would thrust it in the tub— that foolish cock, crying too soon, has sent my husband away.

When night breaks,
I would thrust it in the tub—
that foolish cock,
crying too soon,
has sent my husband away.