Yun Ui, My Fellow of the Same Examination Year, Answered, so I Matched the Rhymes Again and Gave It to Him尹同年儀見和。復次韻贈之。
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 · 2 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 11 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.
Eating taro at night, I prove the monk of Hengyue (衡嶽),
and watching the spring ball-game I set down moon and lamp.
Before the immortal's ink is dry, it is the roll of the red cassia;
the fragrance of heaven stains the tiers of the Boshan censer.
In the end the hand that plays baduk sends hail flying on a clear day,
and for the rest, the sound of the geomungo coldly grinds the ice.
Could I repay you by drawing you out to play day after day?
I cannot master the regret of these several years apart.
I see my hard life for myself — why should I wait for a monk?
The sick eyes of this Dogwan (都官) grow ever more averse to the lamp.
Drunk, my brush-battle could hold against a stern battle line,
but the stairs of heaven in my dream are blocked, tier upon tier.
A white phoenix drops its feathers, and snow flutters on my sleeve;
an old merman scatters tears, and ice fills my beard.
Why do you ask about the indignation I left behind in Mahan (馬韓)?
How could a straight way ever outdo a cunning tongue?
Interlinear notes 1
予自全州被讒見罷。故云。
I had been slandered in Jeonju and dismissed from office, and so it was said thus.