classic waka stream

常よりも嘆きやすらむ七夕は
逢はまし暮れをよそに眺めて
Roma-ji

Tsune yori mo nageki ya suramu Tanabata wa awamashi kure o yoso ni nagamete

English Translation
More than other years
must she now be grieving,
the Weaver Maid,
as from afar she gazes on
the dusk when they might have met?
Meaning
Is the Weaver Maid grieving more than in other years, gazing from afar at the evening when they would have met?
Commentary
Book Two Summer Poems 79

The poem sympathizes with the Weaver Maid, who gazes from afar at the evening when she should have met the Herdsman but cannot. Since it is placed in the Summer book, it may imagine a year in which the Tanabata meeting could not take place as usual.
A Tanabata poem placed near the end of the Summer book bridges to the Tanabata poems that appear in the autumn sequence of Book Three.

First line, "more than other years," sets up a comparison with ordinary years.
Second line uses ya for a question and the attributive ramu in concord, and the poem pauses here.
Third line names the Weaver Star; through inversion the subject comes after the verb.
Fourth line uses the counterfactual mashi, referring to the evening when they would have met.
Fifth line means to gaze on, lost in thought, as at something with no bearing on oneself.
Source
Shika Wakashu
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