Ame no shita nodokekare to ya sakakiba o Mikasa no yama ni sashihajimeken - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

天の下のどけかれとや榊葉を
三笠の山にさし初めけん

Roma-ji: Ame no shita nodokekare to ya sakakiba o Mikasa no yama ni sashihajimeken
English Translation: That all under heaven
might be calm and at peace, was it
the leaves of sakaki
on the Mount of Mikasa
first were set in place?
Meaning: Was it so that all under heaven might be at peace that sakaki leaves were first set on Mount Mikasa, and the gods of Kasuga first worshipped there?
Commentary: Book Twenty Shinto Poems 1260

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed as a poem on the gods when the emperor called for a hundred-poem sequence"
Like the preceding poem, this is a poem on the gods from the hundred-poem sequence called for by Retired Emperor Sutoku. Was it so all under heaven might be at peace that sakaki leaves were first set on Mount Mikasa? he says. The Kasuga Shrine at the foot of Mount Mikasa enshrines the tutelary gods of the Fujiwara, and imagining the first rites there as the setting of sakaki in prayer for the peace of the realm, he praises the blessings of the Kasuga gods.
The author, "Fujiwara no Kiyosuke Ason," was a son of Fujiwara no Akisuke, master of the western capital office. He carried on the poetic learning of the Rokujō house and wrote treatises such as the Fukuro Zōshi and the Ōgishō.
The opening poem, 1256, also sings of Mount Mikasa, and its "sashite" echoes this poem's "sashihajimeken."

First line, "ame no shita": "under heaven," the realm, the world.
Second line, "nodokekare to ya": "nodokekare" is the imperative of the adjective "nodokeshi," "be calm." "Ya," an interrogative binding particle, closes with "ken" in the fifth line.
Third line, "sakakiba o": the leaves of the sakaki used in rites, standing for the worship of the gods. "Sakakiba" also appears in 1281, 1282 and 1288 in this book.
Fourth line, "Mikasa no yama ni": Mount Mikasa behind the Kasuga Shrine, the same mountain as "Mikasayama" in the first line of the opening poem, 1256.
Fifth line, "sashihajimeken": "sasu" means to set up sakaki, an associated word of "kasa," hat, in the fourth line. "Ken," the attributive of the conjectural past "kemu," closes the binding. It echoes "sashite" in the second line of the opening poem, 1256.
Author: Fujiwara no Kiyosuke
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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