Buson - In loneliness, there is joy too, An autumn eve

さびしさのうれしくも有秋の暮 (sabishisa no ureshiku mo ari aki no kure): loneliness, and there is gladness in it too; autumn dusk. さびしさの is loneliness as the subject; うれしくも有 is is glad, too, and the も is the whole poem, the gladness inside the loneliness and not instead of it; 秋の暮 is autumn dusk, or the end of autumn, and the phrase carries both. There is no image and no scene, only a feeling named, qualified by one syllable, and then the hour. The verse comes from Buson's posthumous papers, and the Japanese critics have argued since 1904 whether its plainness is sublime or a little too open; the instant it names, when the loneliness one has been dreading turns out to be welcome, is exact either way. The English is R. H. Blyth's, from his Haiku of 1952, in the Japanese order rather than his.