Composed for a painting of a woman becoming a nun while her parents slept.
つねならぬ世をみるだにもかなしきにゆめさめてのち思ひやるかな
| tunenaranu yo wo miru dani mo kanasiki ni yume samete noti omoFiyaru kana |
This fleeting World: even to see it is Sadness; On waking from their dreams How will they feel it? |
Would you please help me to understand the sense of 〜やる in the last line? Is it an honorific, or perhaps a form of uncertainty, or something completely different? I have not had much luck in either Professor Shirane’s book or with Weblio Kobun.
やる（行る・遣る） as an auxiliary verb conveys a sense that the action of the verb is directed at a spot some distance away from the subject (of a transitive verb), so 思ひやる literally means ‘sending thoughts/feelings (some distance away)’. As such it’s used when someone is thinking about something at some length (‘pondering’), or very commonly in love poetry, missing an absent lover.