人はいさ思ひやすらむ玉かづら
面影にのみいとど見えつつ
面影にのみいとど見えつつ
- Roma-ji
-
Hito wa isa omoi ya suramu tamakazura
omokage ni nomi itodo mietsutsu - English Translation
-
She may be gone,
but does she think of me—
the jeweled vine?
Her image alone
appears to me ever more clearly.
- Meaning
- She may be gone, yet does she think of me?—like a jeweled vine, her image alone appears ever more vividly before my eyes.
- 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.
After the woman left the house, the man, sunk in absent-minded grief, composed this poem.
It expresses his longing for the one who has gone.
As he passes his days without knowing the cause of her departure, only his attachment to her grows stronger.
This poem is also included in the Shinchokusen Collection as anonymous, and it is thought to have been inspired by a poem in Book Two of the Man'yōshū, recorded as "A poem composed by the Empress of Yamato at the time of the Emperor’s death."
- Source
- Ise Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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.
- Was it in vain that through the passing years in this fleeting world we pledged ourselves so lightly— and thus have I lived?
- 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.
- If only I might hear that you had planted the grass of forgetting— then I would know that you had truly thought of me.