I searched the traces
of the old tales, and truly,
as you said, found none—
nowhere in this world a parent
whose heart was such as yours

Meaning

I searched the traces of the old tales and found, as you said, none at all—nowhere in this world a parent whose heart was such as this.

Commentary

Part One: Hotaru

　This is her reply, brought out at last, as the text says, after he had pressed her hard. It shamed him enough that he went no further that night. And how, the narrator wonders, is it all to end between them?—and with that the passage closes. Afterward Genji talks with Murasaki about what tales may do to a young girl's education, and about choosing what the Akashi girl should be allowed to read.

　"The traces of the old tales" takes his own phrase unchanged. "Truly, as you said" likewise takes up his words, so that for two lines she seems simply to grant his argument. Then she ends with "a parent whose heart was such as yours"—it is not the child who turns away that has no precedent, but the parent who falls in love with a child. Using his very words and changing only the subject, she gives the most brilliant kind of answering poem there is. That Genji went no further is precisely because the line went straight to the point. Set immediately after the grand discourse on fiction, this brief exchange cuts the sharper for it.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

I searched the traces of the old tales, and truly, as you said, found none— nowhere in this world a parent whose heart was such as yours

I searched the traces
of the old tales, and truly,
as you said, found none—
nowhere in this world a parent
whose heart was such as yours