Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 13
At Sanho Hall, Visiting the Abbot's Chamber of Hye, Senior Seat of the Inner Chapel, and Chanting the Purple Peony — Two Poems山呼殿。訪內道場惠首座方丈。賦紫牡丹。二首
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.
頑紅未合近宮闈。却學中人身上衣。色厚全欺雞髻淺。香濃應笑麝臍微。貪承萬乘鍾情賞。故待千花入眼稀。舊譜曾聞紫中貴。才凡未識是耶非。
A stubborn red is no thing to bring close to the palace gates, yet it has learned instead the robe worn on a palace attendant's (中官) body. Its color is so thick it utterly scorns the paleness of a cockscomb; its scent is so strong it must laugh at the meanness of the musk deer's navel. Coveting the fond regard of the Lord of Ten Thousand Chariots, it deliberately waited for the time when every other flower is rare to the eye. I have heard that in the old flower albums purple is the noble one among them, but my talent is commonplace, and I cannot tell whether that is so or not.
Interlinear notes 1
年年主上來賞。
Every year the king came and viewed them.