鈴虫の声の限りを尽くしても
長き夜あかずふる涙かな
長き夜あかずふる涙かな
- Roma-ji
-
Suzumushi no koe no kagiri o tsukushite mo
nagaki yo akazu furu namida kana - English Translation
-
Though the bell cricket
cries out to the end of voice,
the long night wears on
unspent, and my falling tears
go on falling without end
- Meaning
- Though the bell cricket spends its whole voice crying, the long night does not break, and my tears keep falling without ever running out.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Kiritsubo
Yugei no Myobu came to the consort's home, and seeing the ruined state of the house and the mother's grief, she wept along with her. She delivered the Emperor's words, and as they talked the night deepened; saying she must return, she spoke this poem in parting. The mother answered with a poem of her own, and Myobu went back to the palace carrying keepsakes entrusted to her.
The bell cricket cries all through the autumn night, and its spending of its whole voice is laid over Myobu's own tears, which will not run out. "Akazu" holds both "the night does not break" and "it does not exhaust itself," so that the long night and the endless grief are tied in a single word. That the visitor weeps as much as the bereaved is itself a way of showing, from the outside, how heavily the consort's death fell.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- This is now the end— the parting road is so sad; the way I would go, if I could choose, is the road of life, of living onward
- On Miyagi moor the wind that binds dew in drops— hearing its sound now, my thoughts go out to the small bush clover at its root there
- More and more the sounds of insects thicken and crowd this reed-grown wild yard, and you from above the clouds add still more dew to the dew
- Since the sheltering tree that kept the rough wind off withered away, now my heart has no quiet left for the small bush clover there