As well as being a great poet,
Ono no Komachi was known as a great beauty, and as having many affairs and treating men badly. The word "komachi" in Japanese came to mean a beautiful woman. But she supposedly ended her days as an poor and ugly old crone, living alone in a shack. There is a
Noh play about this.
Her passionate nature is revealed in this poem:
This moonless night,
There is no way he can come to me.
I rise in longing --
My breast pounds, a leaping flame,
My heart is burnt in the fire.
人にあはむ月のなきには思ひおきて胸はしり火に心やけをり
Her most famous poem, and the one in the
Hyakunin Isshu, is this late one:
The flowers' beauty
Fades away.
I have spent my life in the world
In idle mischief.
And the long rains keep falling.
花の色は移りにけりないたづらに我が身世にふるながめせし間に
Here's a page with a number of her poems.
I was trying to think of some Western figure analogous to her, but I couldn't. One of the most famous of all Japanese poets, and a romantic historical figure, living around 850 AD. If the Roman poet Catullus were a woman...?
EDIT: @
Anh_Minh -- It's okay. The anime story about the hundred nights is almost as likely to be true as the legend, lol.