Waga mikado chiyo tokotoba ni sakaemu to omoite arishi ware shi kanashi mo

我が御門千代とことばに栄えむと
思ひてありし我れし悲しも

Roma-ji: Waga mikado chiyo tokotoba ni sakaemu to omoite arishi ware shi kanashi mo
English Translation: Our palace, I thought,
for a thousand ages, ever
would stand and flourish—
so I believed, and so I stand,
the one who grieves so now.
Meaning: I believed our palace would flourish for a thousand ages, forever—and now it is I, who believed it, who am so sad.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 183

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
He had believed the palace he served would flourish for a thousand ages, forever, and now he grieves for himself who believed it, a lament of betrayed hope.
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 thirteenth 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.

The first line, "waga mikado," means "the palace we serve."
The second line, "chiyo tokotoba ni," means "unchanging for a thousand ages."
In the third line, "sakaemu to," mu is conjecture: that it would flourish.
The fourth line, "omoite arishi," means "I had been thinking."
In the final line, "ware shi kanashi mo," shi is intensive and mo exclamatory: it is I who am sad. As in the sixth poem, 176, it laments a devotion that believed in eternity and has been cut short.
Source: Manyoshu
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