人よりも心の限り眺めつる
月は誰とも分かじものゆゑ
月は誰とも分かじものゆゑ
- Roma-ji
-
Hito yori mo kokoro no kagiri nagametsuru tsuki wa tare to mo wakaji mono yue
- English Translation
-
More than anyone
I have gazed at it, and spent
my whole heart on it
though the moon will never tell
one watcher from another
- Meaning
- I have gazed at it more than anyone, with all my heart; and the moon will never tell me from another.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 384
Headnote: topic unknown.
The ninth poem on the moon. However much one gazes, the moon does not know one watcher from another. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, known by his residence, is Fujiwara no Yorimune (993-1065), a son of Fujiwara no Michinaga who rose to Minister of the Right.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line means more than other people, so that the poem opens on a comparison.
The second line means to the limit of the heart, with everything one has, the phrase used in the two hundred and fourth poem of Book Three and the three hundred and forty-second of this book.
The verb in the third line means to gaze while lost in thought, with a perfect auxiliary in the attributive form.
The fourth line turns to the other side.
The verb at the close means to tell apart, with an auxiliary of negative conjecture and a concessive particle: and yet it will not. However much one spends, the moon makes no distinction. Only one party gives, and the figure of treating the moon as a person is at work.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yorimune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Those who make their homes over beyond the mountains do they see the moon of autumn without having to wait for it as we do
- In Yamato, through a break in the cloud above Takamado hill its light comes added to it the moon drawn like a half bow
- Against all reason I find that I hate a night with no cloud at all in the village of Shinobu the moon on an autumn night
- When the wind comes up the beads are shed, and briefly in the dew beneath the bush clover it lodges the moon out on the wide moor