It was during the Godless Month, on a beautiful winter night, as I was leaving the Palace I saw a certain young courtier, who, when I told him I was driving out to spend the night at the Dainagans, said that my way was his and joined me. The road passed my lady’s house and here it was that he alighted, saying that he had an engagement which he should have been sorry not to fulfil. The wall was half in ruins and through the gap I saw the shadowy waters of the lake. It would not have been easy (for even the moonbeams seemed to loiter here!) to hasten past so lovely a place, and when he left his coach, I left mine.
At once this man (whom I now knew to be that other lover whose existence I had guessed) went and sat unconcernedly on the bamboo sheeting and began to gaze at the moon. The chrysanthemums were just in full bloom, the bright fallen leaves were trembling and falling in the wind. It was indeed a scene of wonderful beauty that met our eyes. Presently he took a flute out of the folds of his dress, and began to play upon it. Then putting the flute aside, he began to murmur “Sweet is the shade” and other catches. Soon a pleasant-sounding native zithern began to tune up somewhere within the house and an ingenuous accompaniment was fitted to his careless warblings. Her zither was tuned to the autumn-mode, and she played with so much tenderness and feeling that though the music came from behind closed shutters it sounded quite modern and passionate, and well accorded with the soft beauty of the moonlight.
The courtier was ravished, and as he stepped forward to place himself right under her window, he turned to me and remarked in a self-satisfied voice, that among the fallen leaves no other footsteps had left its mark. Then plucking a chrysanthemum he sang
“Strange that the music of your lute,
These matchless flowers and all the
beauty of the night
Have lured no other feet to linger at
your door.”
Translated from the Japanese by Arthur Waley.