Iwao to narite
Koke no musu made.
So far as we are aware only two English translations have been published. One of these is by Viscount Fukuba, and, closely following the original, reads as follows:
“May our Sovereign live for thousands and ten thousands of years, until the tiny pebble becomes a moss-covered rock.”
The other, by Professor Chamberlain, is more finished but less literal than the foregoing, and is included in his excellent “Classical Poetry of the Japanese”:—
“A thousand years of happy life be thine!
Live on, My lord, till what are pebbles now,
By age united, to great rocks shall grow,
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.”
To the above translations may be added a third by the late Dr. Gordon:—