Tokiwa naru Mikami no yama no sugimura ya yaoyorozuyo no shirushi naruran - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

常盤なる三上の山の杉群や
八百万代のしるしなるらん

Roma-ji: Tokiwa naru Mikami no yama no sugimura ya yaoyorozuyo no shirushi naruran
English Translation: The cedar grove on
Mount Mikami, evergreen
and changing never:
is it not the very sign
of eight million ages more?
Meaning: The grove of cedars on Mount Mikami, evergreen and forever unchanging, must surely be the sign of a reign that will last for eight million ages.
Commentary: Book Ten Poems of Celebration 640

Headnote: "Composed on Mount Mikami as a provincial song for the Yuki side at the Great Thanksgiving Festival of the first year of Genryaku, in the reign of the present emperor"
Composed on Mount Mikami in Ōmi as a provincial song for the Yuki side at the Great Thanksgiving Festival of 1184, in the reign of Emperor Go-Toba, the emperor at the time this anthology was compiled. The cedar grove of evergreen Mount Mikami, he says, must be the sign of eight million ages. Seeing in the ever-unchanging evergreen cedars a sign of a reign without end, he celebrates the new emperor's reign. Mount Mikami is a mountain in Ōmi; the headnote writes it with characters meaning "three gods," echoing the sense of a mountain of the gods.
The author, "Fujiwara no Suetsune Ason," was the son of Master of the Capital Office of the Left Fujiwara no Akisuke. A poet of the Rokujō Fujiwara house, he carried on the house's poetic learning with his elder brother Kiyosuke and later rose to Minister of the Imperial Household.
This poem closes the book of celebration. Where 606 at the head of the book began with bamboo, "ikuchiyo to kagirazarikeru," this final poem calls the evergreen cedars "a sign of eight million ages," so that the opening and close of the book answer each other through evergreen trees and the endurance of the reign. The book ends with a poem from the Great Thanksgiving Festival of the present emperor, Go-Toba, closing with a prayer for the endurance of the reign of the day.

First line, "tokiwa naru": "tokiwa" means eternally unchanging, here the evergreen cedars. It shares its wording with "tokiwa naru beshi" in the last line of 626 of this book.
Second line, "Mikami no yama no": Mount Mikami is in Ōmi, weaving in a place name of the Yuki province.
Third line, "sugimura ya": "sugimura" is a stand of cedars, and "ya" an interrogative binding particle that closes with the attributive "ran" in the last line. It shares the cedars with "seki no sugimori" in the last line of the preceding poem, 639.
Fourth line, "yaoyorozuyo no": "eight million ages," countless ten thousand ages, a span far exceeding the "ikuchiyo" of 606 at the head of the book, bringing the book to a close.
Fifth line, "shirushi naruran": "ran," the attributive of the present conjectural "ramu," closes the "ya" of the third line. It is the same line as the last line of 619 of this book.
Author: Fujiwara no Suetsune
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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