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Matching the Rhymes for the Reverend Bak次韻朴上人

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 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.

未除舊習猶中酒。已謝浮名更外身。道直自甘人共棄。情同唯有子相親。繁開芍藥欹紅頰。爛熟櫻桃點絳唇。多喜新詩堪咀嚼。泠然洗我筆頭塵。

Unable to rid myself of old habits, I am still struck by wine, and having already declined a floating name, I set my body outside once more. My way being straight, I willingly take the world's casting me off; our feeling being one, only you are close to me. The peonies blooming in profusion tilt their red cheeks, and the ripened cherries dot the crimson lips. I am greatly glad your new poem is worth chewing over: coolly it washes the dust from the tip of my brush.