In hokku we often find a “lasting” element combined with a brief element.  For example, Hyakuchi wrote:

The sold cow
leaves the village;
Fog.

The setting is “Fog.”  A setting in hokku is the wider environment in which something takes place.  But often it is also the “lasting” element, meaning  that when two elements are present, one is more lasting, more enduring than the other.  So in this hokku the “lasting” element is the fog, and the brief element is the passing of the sold cow out of the village.

We find the same thing on a much longer time scale in Bashô’s famous verse:

The old pond;
A frog jumps in …
The sound of water.

In that verse, the lasting element is the pond; the brief element is the jumping of the frog into the water.

There is something very fundamental and satisfying in such combinations, which express transience amid a background of eternity.  Out of the eternal appears the temporal momentarily, and then all returns to eternity. Blyth illustrates this by the very good example of Bach’s Organ Passacaglia, which represents the eternal or absolute by the recurring pedal motif, and the temporal or relative by the melody introduced on the keyboard (see Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido) . 

 

We find it also in Taigi’s

The long day;
Eyes grow weary gazing
Over the sea.

The lasting element is the long day; the brief element is the wearying of the eyes.

 

David