Chanted While Viewing the Flowers in Scholar Yang's Wooded Garden North of the City城北楊生林園賞花吟
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 127 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 2 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
Year after year, when the flowers fall, I grieve to myself in vain,
and straightway wait for the time next year when they will open.
Year after year the flowers open, and again I let the time go empty;
once the powdered sweat has dried and the red has withered, what good is regret?
Luckily there is the house of Master Yang north of the city,
and here, by chance, I steal a glance at famous flowers.
At first I had no mind at all to look at flowers,
but things grow lovelier of themselves only when one comes to be free of mind.
So I think: last night's dream butterfly was the lightest and maddest of all.
What can I do, when the soul of the flowers draws me out to seek their fragrance,
the wind pulling forth the bashful face that hid among the leaves,
and I love all the more the red adornment that covers and holds itself back?
Have you not seen? The Academician (翰林) and the Works Officer (工部) drank themselves to death — where has each of them gone?
And yet they left the elegance of poetry and wine to our company, for our delight.
So face the flowers, lift the cup, and sing aloud again:
the heartless wind and rain will not leave one branch standing for your sake.