Nani sen ni soradanome tote uramiken omoitaetaru kure mo arikeri - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

何せんにそら頼めとて恨みけん
思ひ絶えたる暮れもありけり

Roma-ji: Nani sen ni soradanome tote uramiken omoitaetaru kure mo arikeri
English Translation: Why was it that I
reproached you, saying that your
promises were empty?
Now there are evenings when
I have given up all hope
Meaning: Why did I ever reproach you for raising empty hopes? Now there are evenings when I have stopped hoping altogether.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 944

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed by His Majesty as a love poem when he called for hundred-poem sequences"
A love poem from the same hundred-poem sequence as the six preceding poems. Why did I reproach you for empty promises, she asks, when there are now evenings when I have given up hope? Once she resented the unreliable promises of a lover who said he would come and did not, but now there is not even a promise, and she faces evenings when even the wish to wait has died. Realizing that the days when there was still something to wait for, however empty, were better, she regrets having reproached him.
The author, "Jōsaimon'in no Hyōe," was the daughter of Minamoto no Akinaka, Head of the Council of Divinities. A younger sister of Taikenmon'in no Horikawa, she served Taikenmon'in and later her daughter, Princess Muneko, Jōsaimon'in. She was one of the poets of the Kyūan sequences.
The next poem, 945, is Inpumon'in no Taifu's "naozari no soradanome tote machishi yo no," which shares the second line "soradanome tote." This poem regrets having reproached empty promises, and the next says that the nights of suffering from empty promises are now dear, so that two poems looking back from the present on the time of empty hopes stand side by side.

First line, "nani sen ni": "for what purpose, why."
Second line, "soradanome tote": "soradanome" is an unreliable promise that raises another's hopes, and "tote" means "saying that." It is the same as the second line of the next poem, 945.
Third line, "uramiken": "ken" is the attributive of "kemu," guessing at a past cause, "why did I reproach?" The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "omoitaetaru": "omoitayu" means to give up hope, and "taru" is the attributive of the perfective "tari," "where even the wish to wait has died."
Fifth line, "kure mo arikeri": "kure" is the evening of waiting for a lover's visit, and "keri" expresses realization, "there are such evenings too." It shares the evening with "yūgure wa" in the third line of 954 of this book.
Author: Jōsaimon'in no Hyōe
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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