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How still it is!
Stinging into the stones,
The locusts' trill.

— Matsuo Bashō Oku no Hosomichi - The Narrow Road to the Interior (1702)

静けさや
岩に滲み入る
蝉の声
shizukesaya
iwa ni shimiiru
semi no koe

Original text (Japanese)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Donald Keene, World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867, New York, 1999, p. 89 (Translation: Donald Keene)

More quotes by Matsuo Bashō

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Oku no Hosomichi - The Narrow Road to the Interior (1702)

Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.

I am one
Who eats his breakfast,
Gazing at morning glories.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields.

All Matsuo Bashō quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Matsuo Bashō (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.