Who would tread the rocks
and come so far to visit?
No one—that stirring
of the oak leaves is only
a deer crossing through the dark

Meaning

Who would tread over the rocks to visit here? No one. That stirring of the oak leaves is a deer passing through.

Commentary

The Initiates' Chapter: Entering Ōhara

　The great earthquake of the ninth of the seventh month finished the empress's lodging. It had been a poor place to begin with; now the walls fell and the ruined building leaned and split, and it could not be lived in.
　She wished for somewhere quiet where she might spend her days in the nembutsu, and while a place was being looked for, someone proposed Jakkō-in—far from the capital, deep in the hills of Ōhara, a lonely spot with few people near. She was eager for it, and it was settled. There was nothing to move; the palanquin and the arrangements for the journey were provided by Takafusa's wife.
　As they left the capital and came toward Ōhara the country grew desolate. In the shadow of the hills the evening came early, and the sound of a bell struck somewhere at dusk deepened the loneliness. A wind rose and moved the leaves with a dry sound, and even the calls of deer came down out of the hills. Crossing the bays and islands of the west, she thought, she had not felt so forlorn.
　At Jakkō-in a small hut was put up beside the hall, one room for sleeping and one for the images, and her days were given wholly to the nembutsu.
　One night there was a rustling of leaves being trodden in the garden. Who could have come at this hour, she said—surely no one would mean harm to a woman hiding from the world. A lady was sent out to look, and a small deer passed through the garden. When the empress asked whether anyone had come, Dainagon-no-suke held back her tears and composed this.

　The upper verse asks and the lower answers: who would come? No one—it was a deer.
　"Treading the rocks" is climbing a hard mountain path, and it puts at the front the sense that no one will take such trouble to come.
　What matters is that the answer contains no word of feeling. A deer was crossing: the fact, and nothing else. There is no disappointment stated and no complaint. Because nothing is said, one knows that she had hoped.
　Dainagon-no-suke is Shigehira's wife. In Volume Eleven she came ashore at Akashi as a prisoner and composed on the moon lodging in the same waves; at the close of that volume she took her last leave of her husband and answered his poem on the exchanged robe. Her husband dead, she has taken vows and now serves the empress.

iwane……a great rock; a steep place in the hills.
fumi……treading through.
tare ka wa towan……who would come to visit? no one.
nara no ha……oak leaves.
soyogu……to rustle in the wind.
wataru……to pass across.
Jakkō-in……the convent at Ōhara.
Dainagon-no-suke……the wife of Taira no Shigehira.
iriai no kane……the bell struck at nightfall.
Takafusa……Fujiwara no Takafusa, who appears in Volumes Four and Six.

Source

Heike Monogatari

Other

Who would tread the rocks and come so far to visit? No one—that stirring of the oak leaves is only a deer crossing through the dark

Who would tread the rocks
and come so far to visit?
No one—that stirring
of the oak leaves is only
a deer crossing through the dark