Anthology of Japanese Literature Read Online Free Page B

spring,
Or with golden leaves in autumntide,
Walking hand in hand, your eyes
Fondly fixed upon your lord as upon a mirror,
Admiring him ever like the glorious moon.
    So it may well be that grieving beyond measure,
And moaning like a bird unmated,
He seeks your grave each morn.
I see him go, drooping like summer grass,
Wander here and there like the evening star,
And waver as a ship wavers in the sea.
    No heart have I to comfort him,
Nor know I what to do.
Only your name and your deathless fame,
Let me remember to the end of time;
Let the Asuka River, your namesake,
Bear your memory for ages,
O Princess adored!
ENVOYS
    Even the flowing water
Of the Asuka River—
If a weir were built,
Would it not stand still?
    O Asuka, River of Tomorrow,
As if I thought that I should see
My Princess on the morrow,
Her name always lives in my mind.
    After the death of his wife
Since in Karu lived my wife,
I wished to be with her to my heart's content;
But I could not visit her constantly
Because of the many watching eyes—
Men would know of our troth,
Had I sought her too often.
So our love remained secret like a rock-pent pool;
I cherished her in my heart,
Looking to aftertime when we should be together,
And lived secure in my trust
As one riding a great ship.
Suddenly there came a messenger
Who told me she was dead—
Was gone like a yellow leaf of autumn.
Dead as the day dies with the setting sun,
Lost as the bright moon is lost behind the cloud,
Alas, she is no more, whose soul
Was bent to mine like bending seaweed!
    When the word was brought to me
I knew not what to do nor what to say;
But restless at the mere news,
And hoping to heal my grief
Even a thousandth part,
I journeyed to Karu and searched the market place
Where my wife was wont to go!
    There I stood and listened,
But no voice of her I heard,
Though the birds sang in the Unebi Mountain;
None passed by who even looked like my wife.
I could only call her name and wave my sleeve.
ENVOYS
    In the autumn mountains
The yellow leaves are so thick.
Alas, how shall I seek my love
Who has wandered away?
I know not the mountain track.
    I see the messenger come
As the yellow leaves are falling.
Oh, well I remember
How on such a day we used to meet—
My wife and I!
    . .
In the days when my wife lived,
We went out to the embankment near by—
We two, hand in hand—
To view the elm trees standing there
With their outspreading branches
Thick with spring leaves. Abundant as their greenery
Was my love. On her leaned my soul.
But who evades mortality?
One morning she was gone, flown like an early bird.
Clad in a heavenly scarf of white,
To the wide fields where the shimmering kager ō rises
She went and vanished like the setting sun.
    The little babe—the keepsake
My wife has left me—
Cries and clamors.
I have nothing to give; I pick up the child
And clasp it in my arms.
    In our chamber, where our two pillows lie,
Where we two used to sleep together,
Days I spend alone, broken-hearted:
Nights I pass, sighing till dawn.
    Though I grieve, there is no help;
Vainly I long to see her.
Men tell me that my wife is
In the mountains of Hagai—
Thither I go,
Toiling along the stony path;
But it avails me not,
For of my wife, as she lived in this world,
I find not the faintest shadow.
ENVOYS
    Tonight the autumn moon shines—
The moon that shone a year ago,
But my wife and I who watched it then together
Are divided by ever widening wastes of time.
When leaving my love behind
In the Hikite mountains—
Leaving her there in her grave,
I walk down the mountain path,
I feel not like one living.
    Kakinomoto Hitomaro
    Dialogue poems
If the thunder rolls for a while
And the sky is clouded, bringing rain,
Then you will stay beside me.
    Even when no thunder sounds
And no rain falls, if you but ask me,
Then I will stay beside you.
    From the Hitomaro Collection
    . .
I thought there could