The autumn evening
of long ago is what I
long for, and what showed
itself as the end was a
dream in the dark before dawn

Meaning

It is the autumn evening of long ago that I long for; and what showed itself as the end was a dream in the dark before dawn.

Commentary

Part Two: Minori

　When Murasaki no Ue died, Genji would not be moved from her side, and Yugiri had to take charge of the funeral entirely. Sunk in grief, Genji did not even draw the curtain when his son came near, and so Yugiri looked, for the first time, long at her face. In death she was more beautiful than she had been alive. He spoke this poem to himself then. He had glimpsed her once, years before, on the day of the great wind, and that memory lies under the poem.

　"The autumn evening of long ago" is that day, when he saw her through a gap. "What I long for" is what draws him back. "Showed itself as the end" is seeing her at the last. "The dark before dawn" is the hour at which she died. Two kinds of light—an autumn dusk and the grey before morning—hold her living face and her dead one, and a single poem contains both meetings across all the years between.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

The autumn evening of long ago is what I long for, and what showed itself as the end was a dream in the dark before dawn

The autumn evening
of long ago is what I
long for, and what showed
itself as the end was a
dream in the dark before dawn