忘れてはうち嘆かるる夕べかな
我のみ知りて過ぐる月日を
我のみ知りて過ぐる月日を
- Roma-ji
-
Wasurete wa uchinagekaruru yūbe kana ware nomi shirite suguru tsukihi o
- English Translation
-
Forgetting myself,
I find that I am sighing
in the evening dusk:
though I alone know of it,
the months and days go by
- Meaning
- Forgetting for a moment, I find myself sighing at dusk, though these months and days of love pass by known to no one but me.
- Commentary
-
Book Eleven Love Poems I 1035
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On 'Hidden Love,' from a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the third poem of the sequence on love long kept hidden. Forgetting for a moment that her love is known to her alone, she finds herself sighing in the evening. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Hidden Love" in the same hundred-poem sequence as the preceding poem.
The author, "Princess Shokushi," continues from the preceding poem and was a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa. She served as High Priestess of the Kamo Shrines and later took holy orders. She studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei.
The first line, "wasurete wa," means "forgetting for a moment," with the sense of forgetting that this love is hers alone.
In the second line, "ruru" is spontaneous: I find myself sighing.
The third line, "yūbe kana," ends with the exclamatory "kana," and the poem breaks here. Evening is the hour of waiting for a lover's visit.
The fourth line, "ware nomi shirite," means "known to me alone."
In the last line, "o" carries an exclamatory concession: though it is months and days passing so. It is inverted with the upper verse. Like "yūgure no sora" in 1033, the poem by Retired Emperor Go-Toba, it sings of the evening hour, and against life in the preceding poem, here it is the passing months and days that are sung.
- Author
- Princess Shokushi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Tama no o yo taenaba taene nagaraeba shinoburu koto no yowari mo zo suru
- Next Poem
-
Waga koi wa shiru hito mo nashi seku toko no namida morasu na tsuge no omakura