At the House of Bak Hyeongu I Sing of a Painting of Two Egrets朴君玄球家。賦雙鷺圖。
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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 8 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.
I remember, under the Gangnam sky of old,
I moored a little boat at a misty inlet.
Frost-touched wild rice was mirrored in the clear shallows,
and in the midst of it were two white egrets.
Quietly they lifted shins like green jade,
and idly preened their white, silver-bright feathers.
I meant to copy them in lines of verse,
and long chanted in pain like the crying of an ape.
My drawing of their shape was like enough,
but the good of it I never met at all.
The painter is truly a man after my heart:
he reached even where I could not reach.
Their eyes are alive and have force;
standing tall, they look boldly ahead;
their flesh is lean but has bone in it,
and before they rise they already long for the distance.
Hardest of all is to paint a sound,
yet he knows how to make the look of crying.
How should my poem be a love of meddling?
I only set down the savour within the painting.
A painting is hard for every man to keep,
but a poem can be spread everywhere.
To see the poem is as to have seen the painting:
this too is worth handing down through all the ages.