Though this house has both
a koto and moon past praise,
with those strings of hers
could she draw and hold in place
the man who would not stay here

Meaning

For all that the koto and the moon here are beyond praise, could those strings really have held back the man who would not stay?

Commentary

Part One: Hahakigi

　The Sama no Kami went on to tell of a woman whose refinement went too far. After he had stopped visiting her, he passed her house on a moonlit night and heard a wagon koto sounding inside. As he played his flute along with it, a courtier who was with him spoke this poem. It was sent in to the woman, and she answered with a poem of her own. The episode only deepened his disenchantment, and he gave up going there altogether.

　"E naranu" means beyond anything one could say, so the poem first praises the koto and the moon as faultless, then turns in the second half to the barbed question of whether all that could hold back a man who had grown cold. "Hiki" plays on plucking the strings and drawing a person to oneself, making the point that skill in the arts alone cannot keep a heart. In a single poem it names what the whole rainy-night discussion is about: how far a woman's taste and accomplishment are worth.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Though this house has both a koto and moon past praise, with those strings of hers could she draw and hold in place the man who would not stay here

Though this house has both
a koto and moon past praise,
with those strings of hers
could she draw and hold in place
the man who would not stay here