The Reverend Hyeon (玄) Sent Me Peaches; I Thanked Him with a Poem玄上人饋桃。以詩謝之。
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 · 1 passages · 87 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 15 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.
Have you not seen how mean a thing it was that Dongbangsak (東方朔) ate the peaches?
For nothing he was called a thief by the Queen Mother of the West (西王母).
I have now neither stolen nor begged,
yet in the seat where I sit a platterful of light shimmers.
Sprinkled with millet flour and chewed, they are the clearer,
and they are fit not only to loosen indigestion but to loosen a hangover too.
As I hold them in my hand and delight my eyes, what is loveliest of all
is their color, like the half-reddened cheek of a beauty drunk with wine.
Having no jade to repay you with, I am deeply ashamed of myself,
and only pray that your years may be three thousand.
See this fruit ripen once again,
and send some once more to a greedy old man.