眺めやる心もたへぬわたの原
八重の潮路の秋の夕暮
八重の潮路の秋の夕暮
- Roma-ji
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Nagameyaru kokoro mo taenu wata no hara yae no shioji no aki no yūgure
- English Translation
-
As I gaze far off,
my heart can bear it no more—
over the wide sea
on the eightfold paths of tide,
the evening of the autumn.
- Meaning
- As I gaze far out, my heart can no longer bear it—the autumn evening over the many-layered sea-paths of the vast ocean.
- Commentary
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Autumn Poems 263
Headnote: "On passing along the seashore"
The poet composed this while passing along the seashore. Gazing at the autumn evening spreading over the far sea-paths of the vast ocean, he finds his heart unable to bear its boundlessness and loneliness.
This poem was included in the Shingosen Wakashū, where the upper lines read differently, expressing a brooding that knows not where it leads. Kamo no Mabuchi commented that the poet never composed in that way, so those upper lines must have been revised by a later hand. The Teika text differs in line 2.
Line 1 means "gazing far off"; it is the same word as the opening of 202.
Line 2 means "my heart cannot bear it," and the poem pauses here.
Line 3, wata no hara, means the vast ocean.
Line 4 means "of the many-layered far sea-paths." It uses the same "vast sea's eightfold sea-paths" as the upper lines of 225; the sea where the autumn wind blew on the geese's wings there is sung here as an evening scene.
Line 5 ends on a noun, the same last line as the preceding poem, 262. Against the evening at a mountain field hut there, this one sings of evening on the sea, pairing mountain and sea.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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