Was it in vain
that through the passing years
in this fleeting world
we pledged ourselves so lightly—
and thus have I lived?

Meaning

Was it in vain that through the passing years in this fleeting world we pledged ourselves so lightly—and thus have I lived?

Commentary

Episode Twenty-One: "If I go forth and leave"

There were a man and a woman who loved one another and had no thought of turning their hearts elsewhere, yet over some trifling matter their married life became burdensome.

When the man read the poem she had left behind—"If I go forth and leave, they may say that my heart is light; for people do not know the way of this world between us"—he did not know what had caused her to depart. He wept bitterly and went out to the gate, looking in every direction, but could not find her.

He returned to the house and composed this poem, standing as though bereft of his senses.

Source

Ise Monogatari

Other

For you, my lady, the branch I have broken off— though it is but spring, thus has it taken on an autumn’s crimson leaves.
If I go forth and leave, they will say my heart is light— so it may be said; for people do not know the way of this world between us.
She may be gone, but does she think of me— the jeweled vine? Her image alone appears to me ever more clearly.
Now that it is so, though one would sow the seeds of the grass of forgetting, would that even this were not left to another’s heart.

Was it in vain that through the passing years in this fleeting world we pledged ourselves so lightly— and thus have I lived?

Was it in vain
that through the passing years
in this fleeting world
we pledged ourselves so lightly—
and thus have I lived?