Tsune yori mo mutsumashiki kana hototogisu shide no yamaji no tomo to omoeba - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

常よりも睦ましきかな郭公
死出の山路の友と思へば

Roma-ji: Tsune yori mo mutsumashiki kana hototogisu shide no yamaji no tomo to omoeba
English Translation: Dearer than ever
do you seem to me now,
O cuckoo,
for I think of you as my friend
on the mountain road of death
Meaning: Cuckoo, you seem dearer to me than ever, for I think of you as my companion on the mountain road of death.
Commentary: Book Nine Poems of Lament 582

Headnote: "Composed by His Majesty when, being ill, he heard a cuckoo sing at the Toba Palace"
Composed by Retired Emperor Toba when, during his illness, he heard a cuckoo sing at the Toba Palace. You seem dearer than usual, cuckoo, he says, for I think of you as a companion on the mountain road of death. Since the cuckoo was believed to sing as it crossed the mountain of death in the underworld, the emperor, sensing his end, hears in its voice a fellow traveler for the journey ahead. Amid the loneliness before death, one senses a heart quietly trying to accept it.
The author, "His Majesty Toba-in," indicates a poem by Retired Emperor Toba, son of Emperor Horikawa and the seventy-fourth emperor. He ruled as cloistered emperor through the three reigns of Sutoku, Konoe and Go-Shirakawa and died in 1156.
Poem 555 of this book entrusts a message to a dead son to the cuckoo, while this poem makes the cuckoo a companion on the journey of death. The cuckoo also appears in 588 of this book.

First line, "tsune yori mo": "more than usual." Poem 566 of this book opens with the same words.
Second line, "mutsumashiki kana": "mutsumashi" means dear and familiar, and "kana" is exclamatory. The poem pauses here.
Third line, "hototogisu": an address. The cuckoo was believed to sing as it crossed the mountain of death in the underworld. It also appears in 555 and 588 of this book.
Fourth line, "shide no yamaji no": the mountain of death is a steep mountain in the underworld that the dead are said to cross.
Fifth line, "tomo to omoeba": "omoe" is the perfective, and with "ba" gives a reason, "since I think of you as a friend," supplying the reason for the upper verse afterward, by inversion.
Author: Retired Emperor Toba
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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