Answering Bang Yeonbo, Top Graduate, in His Rhymes After He Sent a Poem in Reply房狀元衍寶見和。次韻答之。
居士年來了萬緣。唯有詩狂餘習氣。物或不類尋常看。窮搜細剖狀其異。此茶品絶可無詩。况復平生素酷嗜。悠然到此誰所餉。想自江淮煙瘴裏。爲恐淸香先發洩。牢鎖縹箱纏紫蘽。秘之不敢示情親。琭琭何曾數餘子。寓心獨待識茶人。不是風斤誰斲鼻。碎鐺撲火久不煎。正怯兒曹輕品味。譬如富貴深閨中。養得嬌姹鵶頭稚。眼高深恐嫁凡婿。着意東床期欲致。我今何者敢來試。意外忽逢仙分至。房公落落天上人。褚裒皮裏陽秋備。評人餘論移於茶。說脉論源聊見寄。讀了冷冷洗煩悶。恰如醉面洒寒水。對茶索酒頗似狂。可笑前言眞戱耳。草庵他日叩禪居。數卷玄書討深旨。雖老猶堪手汲泉。一甌卽是參禪始。
In recent years this layman has done with all his attachments, and only the mad habit of poetry is left. Whenever a thing is out of the ordinary, I search it to the end and split it fine to draw out its strangeness. This tea is of surpassing quality — how could it go without a poem? How much more so, since all my life I have loved it fiercely. Who sent this, that has come here from so far away? It must have come out of the mists and miasmas of Jianghuai (江淮). Fearing the clear fragrance might first leak away, I locked it fast in a pale-jade box and bound it with a purple cord. I hid it and did not dare show it even to those closest to me; this glittering thing — how should I count it out to others? I set my heart on it and waited alone for one who knows tea, for who but an axe like the wind could pare the tip of a nose? That I broke the cauldron and put out the fire and did not brew it long was from dreading that the children would taste it lightly. It is as if, deep in the inner chambers of a rich and noble house, one raised a lovely and graceful girl, and, being high in one's standards, deeply feared to marry her to a common son-in-law, and set one's heart on getting a fine match. What am I, that I dare come and taste it? Unlooked for, an immortal's portion has suddenly reached me. Lord Bang is a towering man from above the heavens, who, like Chu Pou (褚裒), has the scales of the Spring and Autumn within him. He turned the words left over from appraising men onto tea, taking its pulse and discussing its sources, and sent them to me. Reading them through, my stifling was coolly washed away, just as if cold water had been dashed on a drunken face. To call for wine with tea set before me was rather like madness; how laughable — what I said before was truly only a jest. Some day I shall knock at the meditation room of the thatched hermitage and, with a few volumes of abstruse writing, probe the deep meaning. Old as I am, I can still draw spring water with my own hands: one bowl is itself the beginning of Zen contemplation.
Interlinear notes 1
房爲內侍。
Lord Bang was a palace attendant (內侍).