Each night you said
that you would surely come
has passed in vain;
though I no longer rely on it,
still do I live on longing.
- Meaning
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Each night you said you would come has passed in vain; though I no longer rely upon your promise, I still pass my days in longing for you.
- Commentary
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Episode Twenty-Three: "By the well-curb"
The children who had once played together by the shared well at last married when they came of age.
But after the wife’s parents died and their life grew poor, the man, weary of such wretched living, took up with another woman in Takayasu of Kawachi.
After he heard his wife’s poem, "When the wind blows, white waves rise offshore—so on Tatsuta Mountain, in the midnight hours, are you crossing it alone?" he came to cherish her and ceased to visit the woman in Takayasu.
In answer to the woman of Takayasu’s poem, "Toward where you are I shall sit and gaze—O Mount Ikoma, let not the clouds conceal you, though even if rain should fall," the man said that he would go to see her, yet he did not appear.
Still longing for him and wishing that he would come, she composed this poem.
This tale is also included in the Yamato Monogatari.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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