On This Day the Drinking Was Over and We Rested a Little, Only Three or Four of Us Sitting Over Tea, When the Monk Brought Out Kumquats, Quinces and Red Persimmons to Serve His Guests and Came Again Carrying a Bottle of Good Wine — Setting Down the Business of One Night是日飮闌小息。唯三四人相對飮茶而已。及夜半。坐久體煩。睡暈著眼。師出金橘木爪紅杮。餉于坐客。未及一嚼。不覺眠魔之頓去也。俄而喚沙彌。沙彌鼻鼾不應。師笑入房中。手挈美酒一壺。坐客皆盧胡大笑。於是小酌數四盃。漸引靜中之樂。噫。平生適意之遊。恐他日不復得也。因著一篇。以記一宵之事爾。
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 · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 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.
For four and twenty years I have drifted about,
and day by day the dust has filled my bowels.
Once I heard the talk of a clear night,
and already I feel my whole body cool as frost.
How much more when the fruits that fill the tray
leave, each and all, the fragrance of immortals.
Strange it is — tangerines of Dongting (洞庭)!
From flesh like jade a cold juice runs.
I am a descendant of Li Heng (李衡),
and it is fitting that I should taste this taste.
The frost-struck persimmon is soft of flesh,
dark red, so that the sight of it dazzles.
I love these red eggs of the gyu-dragon (虬);
they do not enter the yard of the golden crow.
The quince is red over half its cheek,
and falls piece by piece to the keen blade.
You throw me precious things — with what shall I repay?
I am ashamed to have no jade to offer.
The cold that is left of them is here,
as though I had entered a country of ice and snow.
The joy of one night that suited my heart —
how should I dare forget it all my life?