classic waka stream

あしひきの山路の苔の露の上に
寝覚め夜深き月を見るかな
Roma-ji

Ashihiki no yamaji no koke no tsuyu no ue ni nezame yofukaki tsuki o miru kana

English Translation
On the mountain road
over the dew on the moss
I wake in the night
and deep in the dark I lie
and look at the moon up there
Meaning
On the dew that lies on the moss of the mountain road I wake far into the night, and look at the moon.
Commentary
Book Four Autumn Poems I 398

Headnote: composed on the theme of the moon in the mountains.
The twenty-third poem on the moon. The topic is a mountain moon, and the poem gives a sleeper on a mountain road waking late to look at it.
Fujiwara no Hideyoshi served Retired Emperor Go-Toba as a guard of the northern quarters and was valued by him as a poet; after the Jokyu disturbance he took orders under the name Nyogan. This is his second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and ninetieth poem.
The time is deep in a night in autumn; the place is a mountain road.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line is a pillow word attaching to the word for mountain, used in Sanjo's three hundred and eighty-second poem.
The second and third lines give the dew lying on the moss of the road, the place where the traveller lies down. Moss appears also in Saigyo's seventh poem in Book One, in the water running beneath it.
The word in the fourth line means waking in the night, used in Yoshitsune's three hundred and ninety-fifth poem; the phrase after it means that the night is far gone.
The poem closes on an exclamatory particle. A comfortless night on the road, lying on wet moss, is the setting in which the moon is seen, so that bodily hardship and the beauty of the sky occupy one scene.
Author
Fujiwara no Hideyoshi
Source
Shin Kokin Wakashu
Other