On the wall of rock
of a hill village where he
I knew is no more,
how long and constant of heart
the creeping vine has spread out

Meaning

On the rock wall of a hill village where the man I knew is gone, how long and constant of heart the vine has crept.

Commentary

Part Three: Agemaki

　The fourth of the five, spoken by the Master of the Prince's Household. "The man I knew" is the late Eighth Prince, and the poem recalls their acquaintance while he lived. A note of mourning runs through the party, and Uji is shown as a place bound up with the memory of the dead.

　Iwagaki is a face of piled rock standing like a wall. Kuzu is a vine that runs a long way, and kokoro nagashi is patient and unchanging. The long creeping of the vine and the constancy of a heart are joined in the single word nagashi. Nature going on unchanged after its master is gone makes his absence felt the more.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

It is the cherry that brings it home to us all: blossom at its best and crimson leaf alike belong to a world that does not stay
By what way, I wonder, did the autumn take itself off and go from us, when the shade of the crimson leaves is so hard to pass by
Now that autumn ends and the loneliness increases at the foot of the tree, do not blow past and be gone, wind in the pines on the peak
It is not that I think to lie down with you as with the young grasses, and yet I have the feeling of something knotted within

On the wall of rock of a hill village where he I knew is no more, how long and constant of heart the creeping vine has spread out

On the wall of rock
of a hill village where he
I knew is no more,
how long and constant of heart
the creeping vine has spread out