長き世を頼めてもなほ悲しきは
ただ明日知らぬ命なりけり
ただ明日知らぬ命なりけり
- Roma-ji
-
Nagaki yo o tanomete mo nao kanashiki wa
tada asu shiranu inochi narikeri - English Translation
-
Though I promise you
a long age of years, what still
grieves me is only
this: that our lives are lives which
know nothing of tomorrow
- Meaning
- Though I promise you long years, what grieves me still is only this: that our lives know nothing of tomorrow.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Ukifune
Having got out of the Chief Chronicler Michisada what lay between Kaoru and Ukifune, Niou rode down to Uji late in the First Month with only a few attendants. He looked in on her, then imitated Kaoru's voice, made his way into her bedroom, and left her no escape. The next day he did not go back to the capital but stayed on, and while Ukon covered for them the two spent the day together. This poem belongs to that day. Ukifune answered it, and they passed another day in the same way.
Nagaki yo is a long stretch of years to come, the standard way of swearing that a bond will last. Tanomete is to make another expect something. Yet immediately after it comes "lives that do not know their own tomorrow," so that the oath cancels itself. It shows Niou exactly as he is, ardent and without foresight, and things fall out as the words say: the tie between them soon reaches its limit.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The name of this place is as it was of old, and yet the face of one I knew is altered under this moonlight in the bedroom
- It is not yet an old thing, worn out and gone by— and for your sake I would have you know that I wait here with a heart that is deep
- I would not lament your heart at all, if only I could believe that in this world it is our lives alone that are not settled
- As never before in this world, I shall lose my way—the tears that come before all else are darkening the very road I must take