常よりも嘆きやすらむ七夕は
逢はまし暮れをよそに眺めて
逢はまし暮れをよそに眺めて
- Roma-ji
-
Tsune yori mo nageki ya suramu Tanabata wa awamashi kure o yoso ni nagamete
- English Translation
-
More than other years
must she now be grieving,
the Weaver Maid,
as from afar she gazes on
the dusk when they might have met?
- Meaning
- Is the Weaver Maid grieving more than in other years, gazing from afar at the evening when they would have met?
- Commentary
-
Book Two Summer Poems 79
The poem sympathizes with the Weaver Maid, who gazes from afar at the evening when she should have met the Herdsman but cannot. Since it is placed in the Summer book, it may imagine a year in which the Tanabata meeting could not take place as usual.
A Tanabata poem placed near the end of the Summer book bridges to the Tanabata poems that appear in the autumn sequence of Book Three.
First line, "more than other years," sets up a comparison with ordinary years.
Second line uses ya for a question and the attributive ramu in concord, and the poem pauses here.
Third line names the Weaver Star; through inversion the subject comes after the verb.
Fourth line uses the counterfactual mashi, referring to the evening when they would have met.
Fifth line means to gaze on, lost in thought, as at something with no bearing on oneself.
- Source
- Shika Wakashu
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Kawakami ni yūdachi surashi mikuzu seku yanase no sanami tachisawaku nari
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Shitamomiji hitoha zutsu chiru ko no shita ni aki to oboyuru semi no koe kana