Classical Japanese Database

Edit translation #41.

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TWENTY-SECOND It rains during the morning. No visitors today. I feel lonely and amuse myself by writing at random. These are the words: Who mourns makes grief his master. Who drinks makes pleasure his master. The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote: In the mountain village who are you calling yobuko-bird? I thought you lived alone. There's nothing so intriguing as living alone. Chosho, the recluse, said: If one's guest enjoys a half-day's leisure, His host loses a half-day's leisure. Sodo is always moved by these words. I, too, feel it. Not this melancholy, cuckoo, but your solitary song.

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