Matching the Rhymes of the Poem Master Go Hangjung Presented to Yun Wi, Director of Studies and Surveillance Commissioner次韻高先生抗中獻廉察尹司業威

Yesterday the Academician of the Surveillance showed me the long piece that Master Go had presented, and then bade me match it. Before I could frame my thoughts I received his direction again, and coming to Impi County I stayed at the guest house because of the rain, and only then did I get one poem matched and completed, which I present to his travelling carriage (行軒).

When I was young I was once frivolous, and feigning madness I have come at last to this day. Among the high ministers, who drags on his shoes to greet me? And the noble ones now and then roll back their collars at me. Fallen low, I go along with the laughter of others, and being straitened or getting through I truly leave to fate. The gate clear as ice was opened to me at last, and the bamboo shoots standing like jade are mingled thick together. Wrongly I came into the intimacy of the jewelled mat, and often received the jade sweet wine poured out for me. When you rose, sir, to the Yakseong (藥省), you spoke my name all through the Forest of Letters (詞林). Wealth and rank, I thought, might be woven and made; fame and office, I thought, were things to chase and catch. The man of Yue thought the king's crown a glory, and Mo Mu (嫫母) got into the mandarin-duck quilt. I was allowed to eat the roasted ox heart, and was suffered to come forward into the shade of the crane canopy. Happily now, presuming beyond my place, I hold a charge outside, and have barely won escape from sinking on the flat. Governing a county, how should I raise up any praise? Holding office, I only keep to the admonitions. In the common run I do the trifling things myself, so what leisure have I to be lost in books? Caring for the prison cases, my feeling is often pity; breaking the overbearing, my strength will not bear it. The thought of home is far away, and I send the months and years swiftly by. Happily, the envoy of the crimson sky makes his round at times along the green sea's shore. Your outstanding name is a talent of eight pecks, your noble physiognomy has the three im (三壬) upon the belly. Seeing your clear form but once, it is so stately that it damps at once the heat of my parched lungs. The lotus leans upon Wang Jian's (王儉) office, the strings carry on Bo Ya's (伯牙) geomungo. It is as if I faced the sun in deep winter, as if ten days of long rain had cleared. Yesterday I entered a straitened, out-of-the-way river county and chanted alone, leaning on the guest house veranda. At the cloud's edge a cold wild goose takes fright, among the trees a bird in the snow cries out. A county clerk brings glad word: the envoy's banners, they say, are crossing the peak ahead. The soldiers in the street sound bell and drum, the kitchen folk wash out the pots and cauldrons. Blankly I watch for the train to arrive, and suddenly the darkening light has come on and encroached. Looking at the lines, my beard is all broken off, and biting the brush, its tip has gone wholly black. My hidden heart is stifled to no purpose, and sitting alone it is still and quiet. The place being narrow, with whom shall I speak? My feeling being deep, I am rather like a mute. Feeling the times, I am often far gone; longing for things past, my throat is suddenly stopped. I am barred from being beside the brocade mat, and think of hearing the sound like gold and jade. When shall I meet with a fine prospect and face the splendid hairpins the whole day long? The zither that strikes on jade sounds choked, and the cup that tilts the Milky Way is deep at the bottom. Where there is a hill we admire it all together, and where there is water there is none we do not come to together. Wetting the brush, we spread out splendid writing; trimming the lamp, we talk of the old heart. If you should go to look at the old man Go's house, grant me too leave to go and seek it with you.