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’ERCOME with pity for this world, My tears obscure my sight; I wonder, can it be the moon Whose melancholy light Has saddened me to-night?

Saigyō was a member of the Fujiwara family, an eccentric monk, and a famous poet, who lived 1115–1188. He was once in attendance on the Emperor, when a bird by fluttering its wings began scattering the blossoms of a plum tree. The Emperor directed him to drive off the bird, but the priest, with an excess of zeal, killed it by a stroke of his fan. On reaching home his wife told him that she had dreamt that she was changed into a bird and that he had struck her; and this incident made such an impression upon him, that he retired from Court, and spent the rest of his life in the church.