秋の夜の長きかひこそなかりけれ
待つに更けぬる有明の月
待つに更けぬる有明の月
- Roma-ji
-
Aki no yo no nagaki kai koso nakarikere matsu ni fukenuru ariake no tsuki
- English Translation
-
There is nothing gained
by the length of autumn nights
nothing gained at all
for while I waited it rose
the moon that stays past daybreak
- Meaning
- The length of an autumn night gains one nothing after all: while I waited it wore away, and here is the moon of dawn.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 421
Headnote: topic unknown.
Taking up the night of waiting in the previous poem, this one finds that the long autumn night has gone in waiting. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Tadatsune (1177-1225), who served as Major Captain of the Right.
The time is near daybreak in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The word in the second line means use, profit, as in Jien's four hundred and fourth poem. The premise is that a long autumn night ought to be an advantage to one who waits.
The concessive form in the third line answers the emphatic particle and denies that advantage.
The fourth line means that it wore away while he waited. However long the night, waiting spends it all the same.
The poem closes on a noun. The moon that stays in the sky after dawn runs through the three hundred and ninth to twelfth poems of this book. What was waited for has not come and the day is breaking, the figure of Yoshitsune's two hundred and ninth poem in Book Three, which set the advance of the night against the stillness of the waiting.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Tadatsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- When even the moon cannot console me, on these nights of the autumn it knows nothing of my heart and blows, the wind in the pines
- On the cold thin mat the autumn wind of a night spent waiting deepens and she spreads one sleeve of moon the maiden of Uji bridge
- Where it ends at last the sky is one with the plain of Musashi, and out of a field of grasses the light of the moon comes up
- Are they waiting still for the moon, I wonder, those villagers who live under the far edge of cloud that is clearing after rain