Higurashi ni kimi matsu yama no hototogisu towanu toki ni zo koe mo oshimanu

English Translation

All the day long, on
the pine-clad hill where I wait
the cuckoo is heard
and it is when you do not
come that it spares not its voice

Meaning

All day long, on the hill where I wait for you among the pines, the cuckoo does not spare its voice — and it is when you do not come that it cries the loudest.

Commentary

24 The Mountain Where I Wait

In the reign of the previous emperor, the daughter of the Minister of the Right went to the upper apartment and waited there. She was hoping the emperor would come, and when he did not, she composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The poet is a daughter of the Minister of the Right. Of the previous emperor the prose tells us nothing beyond that designation.
The setting is the upper apartment in the palace, a room near the emperor's own quarters where women in service waited.
What prompted the poem was that the emperor she was waiting for did not come. It was composed there, where she waited.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded.

The first word means all day long, from morning until dark — a length of time rather than an hour.
The verb for waiting is also the word for a pine, so that the hill where she waits is at once a hill of pines, and a cuckoo can be heard calling from it.
The fourth line turns on the word for visiting: it is when he does not come, and only then. An emphatic particle governs the verb that ends the poem.
A cuckoo that does not spare its voice stands over a woman who does not spare hers in weeping. The whole complaint of a wasted day of waiting is put into a bird's call.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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