classic waka stream

夢にだに見ずありしものをおほほしく
宮出もするかさ桧の隈廻を
Roma-ji

Ime ni dani mizu arishi mono o ōhoshiku miyade mo suru ka sahi no kumami o

English Translation
Never had I dreamed,
not even in my dreams, of this—
with a heavy heart
I go out to serve the palace
by the winding Hinokuma road.
Meaning
Never had I seen it even in a dream, yet now, with a heavy heart, I go out to serve at the shrine along the winding road through Hinokuma.
Commentary
Book Two Elegies 175

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
The speaker laments this changed duty, going out with a heavy heart along the Hinokuma road to serve at the temporary shrine, something he had never imagined even in a dream.
According to the headnote, these are twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants who served in Prince Kusakabe's palace. A left note, citing the Nihon shoki, records that the prince died in the fourth month of the third year of Empress Jitō's reign (689). The sequence takes up, scene by scene, the laments of the attendants: the garden and ponds of the Shima Palace bereft of their master, and the night watches they kept on the hills of Mayumi and Sada where the prince lay in state. This is the fifth poem of the sequence.
The authors were the attendants who served in Prince Kusakabe's palace, and their individual names have not come down to us. Toneri were officials who served close to the Emperor and members of the imperial family as guards and aides. One theory holds that Kakinomoto no Hitomaro composed the poems in the attendants' voice, but this is not settled.

In the first line, "ime ni dani," dani means "even."
The second line, "mizu arishi mono o," means "though I had never seen it," and is hypermetric, with eight syllables.
The third line, "ōhoshiku," means "with a clouded heart." The same word appears in the nineteenth poem of the sequence, 189.
In the fourth line, "miyade mo suru ka," ka is exclamatory: so I go out to serve. The poem pauses here.
In the final line, "sahi no kumami o," sa is a prefix, Hinokuma is a place on the way to Mayumi Hill, and kumami means the bends of the road. By inversion, the road he travels is named last.
Source
Manyoshu
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