Elder Kim Jayu, Having Got the Red Wisteria Staff Given Him by Yun the Academy Recorder, Asks Me to Sing of It金大丈子由得尹學錄所贈朱藤杖。請予賦之。
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 · 137 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 7 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.
The master of Gyerim is past ninety,
and frost and snow cling in full measure to his two whiskers.
Not having achieved the golden elixir (金丹), his legs grow ever stiffer,
and going out and in at the gate he must prop himself on a staff.
Young Yun, in whose high spirit the many put their trust,
gave him the Myriad-Year Red Wisteria (萬歲紅藤) of Nanzhao (南詔).
Its five joints are sparse and even, and it stands higher than the hand;
straight at six feet, it rises level with the shoulder.
With it he goes as he pleases through a thousand hills and ten thousand valleys:
yesterday's failing old man is today in his prime.
In Chang'an the wine-shops are many,
and when he goes out he never fails to hang a hundred coins on it.
Have you not seen how the yeongsu staff (靈壽杖) of Kong Guang (孔光) put the sovereign to the trouble of a bestowal?
Could one not be ashamed to brave such glory with a white head?
The master has of old the thought of the crimson haze,
and makes no business of the encumbrance of office that binds the body.
The master has a plain bearing,
and this staff is fit for the mountains.
Why need he learn from Luo Gongyuan (羅公遠),
and cast it to make a silver bridge and enter the palace of the moon?